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LETTERS FROM 
APPLEHURST 

J&, BY 
Mr* 

G. Wf HINCKLEY 

\\ 

AUTHOR OF 

“ROUGHING IT WITH BOYS", “THE GOOD 
WILL IDEA", ETC. 




THE GOOD WILL PUBLISHING COMPANY 
HINCKLEY. MAINE 









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LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 
Copyright 1923 by Good Will Publishing Company 


DEC 24 ’23 

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llje nizmctx\i ol Member, 

3 hchicate tfyrs fralwme. 


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Preface 

For a number of months each issue of the Good 
Will Record carried this statement at the head of the 
first column on page three: 

“In April, 1917, the editor of the 
Record left his office and went to a 
little farm he calls Applehurst. He 
had two objects in view', viz: First 
to build up his nervous system; and 
second to do his “bit” toward pre¬ 
venting a food shortage later in 
the year. He wrote letters while 
there, and a few of them were 
printed. He still continues to 
write to his friends. 

Most of the letters were written to Mr. M. H. 
Leavens, a New York business man, whose gen¬ 
erosity to the Good Will homes and schools at Hinck¬ 
ley, Maine, was credited each month in the “Cash 
Column” to 

Life Member Manhattan 

It was farthest from my thought that the letters 
would ever be put into permanent form; but after a 
time there were requests that this be done. And 
hence this volume preserving them in the order in 
which they appeared. 

G. W. HINCKLEY. 

Hinckley, Maine. 

1923 



Contents 


LETTER 1. 11 

A scarcity of buck-wheat and seed beans—Trouble 
in the Balm of Gilead tree—Mr. and Mrs. English 
Sparrow arrive. 

LETTER II. 15 

Jelly making as a cure for tired nerves—“From 
Kitchen to Consumer”—Praying under a railroad 
bridge. 

LETTER III. 22 

I surrender to cats—“Jim” and the meadow¬ 
larks—A bird tragedy on the north veranda— 
Swallows fly high. 

LETTER, IV. 29 

I set a hen—An up-to-date poultry house and 
its advantages — The grand-children gather 
“strictly fresh” eggs. 

LETTER V.!. 33 

A feathered reformer causes me much trouble—I 
lose my temper—Eight fluffy chicks. 

LETTER VI. 37 

Restored nerves—Potato bugs arrive at Apple- 
hurst—Weeding vs. pulling weeds—A possible 
surplus of potatoes threatens bankruptcy. 

LETTER VIII. 41 

Applehurst is struck by lightening—The grand- 
babies are safe—The attic window is lost. 

LETTER VIII. 45 

My enthusiasm wanes—I discover why I did not 
originally become a farmer—I have two boarders 
and make a discovery—Pink teas and other dissi¬ 
pations in the potato field. 










8 


CONTENTS 


LETTER IX. 50 

A song-sparrow sings while her nest burns— 
Another bird tragedy—A morning concert. 

LETTER X. 56 

I hold an agricultural fair in the south room— 

Music by famous bands—Jack-o’-Lantern wel¬ 
comes the coming and derides the departing 
guests. An attack of horripilation. 

LETTER XI. 64 

Shanghai calls on me—A visit from an angel. 

LETTER XII. 69 

I am a producer and review the season’s products— 

The plague of boytoothetis appears in my orchard 
—I look toward another season. 

LETTER XIII. 73 

A cremation in the fire-place— Mus domestica 
stirs up a rumpus—I may sell Applehurst and 
move away. 

LETTER XIV. 80 

I take my place among sheep-raising patriarchs— 

Job had more sheep than I—My first lamb is 
born but the mother reproaches me. 

LETTER XV. 87 

“Clover-Slope” is annexed to Applehurst—I con¬ 
template changing the name to “Treasure Hill.” 

LETTER XVI. 92 

Shanghai calls again and goes away happy—He 
catches a big trout—A fish dinner and the trout 
continues to grow. 

LETTER XVII. 101 

I undertake something different — Ring-neck 
pheasants prosper but start for Tennessee, or 
possibly for Florida. 

LETTER XVIII. 108 

I reach my sixty-seventh birthday. 












CONTENTS 


9 


LETTER XIX. 113 

I meet my Waterloo at the swimming' hole—A 
game of leap frog is still more convincing—A boy 
guest laughs at my muscle. 

LETTER XX. 122 

I receive a mouse trap and a pumpkin-seed for a 
Christmas present—Modern poetry inspires me 
to do my worst. 

LETTER XXI. 127 


Why Applehurst became part of a game preserve 
—A couple of boys are caught hunting on forbidden 
hunting territory—“Old Jess” is dead—She stays 
by me at the fire-side—The scriptural description 
of a horse—Shakespeare describes a similar ani¬ 
mal—My own tribute to “Jess’—A two seated car¬ 
riage for sale. 

LETTER XXII. 134 

The most honorable employment of man—The old 
story of the horse-shoe nails—I run behind finan¬ 
cially—A threatened deficit of $6,553,600.00—“Old 
farmers.” 

LETTER XXIII. 143 

A Doctor of Divinity informs me he is coming— 

He wants to be greeted in Latin or Greek—I decide 
on Latin—A blank response—A vague reference 
to my postum. 

LETTER XXIV. 151 

My wooly idiots come home from pasture in the 
night time—Old Billy’s lunches cost beyond all 
reason—A ram will knock down the man that 
feeds him—Wool is thirty cents a pound. 

LETTER XXV. 156 

I tell a Gilbert Stuart story and apologize for it— 

I am not a successful farmer—There are various 
reasons for failure—A child’s instinct for the 
soil—Success crowns my farming. 









10 


CONTENTS 


LETTER XXVI. 166 

Wool is twenty-five cents a pound—Clothing is 
way up—The boy Ephraim visits me—We have 
toast and honey—What is sweeter than honey and 
the honeycomb? A scriptural incident recalled. 

LETTER XXVII. 173 

I question “Old Billy’s spirituality—Am forced to 
sell my sheep—The ninnies have an impromptu 
parade—I accept an offer for them—Some Ply¬ 
mouth Rocks and Rhode Island Reds left on the 
hill. 

LETTER XVIII. 182 

A wood-chuck invades my lawn—I offer a reward 
for dead cats—The hens are on the verge of a 
strike—A pair of rabbits, a lamb, a Belgian pup 
and kiddies from New Jersey add to the confusion 
on the hill. 

LETTER XXIX. 188 

A Christmas address at Colby College—A chase 
after Santa Claus—Marten Stream freezes over— 
“Fat” accepts an invitation to supper—He changes 
his mind and goes skating—I have a fit of resent¬ 
ment—Literature fails to comfort me—Poetry 
proves useless—Adirondack Murray saves the day 
for me—A happy recovery. 

LETTER XXX. 203 

A big mistake at armistice time—Wool drops to 
fifteen cents a pound—I have a dollar sale—“Old 
Billy”, the only animal that really respected me— 

Shall Tweedledee go for ninety-nine cents when 
Tweedledum is priced at a dollar?—Profits in 
marigolds, cannas and nasturtiums. 

LETTER XXXI. 210 

A lecture before the Ball Bird Club—Things I 
don’t know—Why I wrote to Life Member Man¬ 
hattan—Some great preachers—A scene in City 
Temple, London—I call the roll; I answer “Dead” 

—Life Member, Manhattan is gone—Death a 
beneficent provision—The Letters from Applehurst 
are ended. 










Letters from Applehurst 

LETTER I 


My dear daughter: 

I suppose you heard several weeks ago that I have 
enlisted. Too old to tread the deck of a battleship 
and not eligible for military training on account of 
age or previous experience, I have become a member 
of another wing of Governmental service. I really 
enlisted April 28th. There were no formalities of 
physical examination to see if I were “fit”; there 
was no registration or anything else that would take 
time; I simply entered the service. 

When war was declared I thought I would write 
Governor Milliken and offer my services; I had the 
letter all formulated in my mind and it read as 
follows: 

“To His Excellency Governor Milliken: 

“I understand that there is great need of men, 
munitions and farm products; I am not eligible for 
enrollment in military service, but if there is any¬ 
thing that I can do you will find me watching for 
orders and ready to obey.” 

But the more I thought of it, the more certain I 
became that such a letter would only be a bother and 
nothing would come of it anyway; fully convinced of 
this I made a sudden move to Applehurst. I de¬ 
pended upon Mr. Walter Price, Farm Manager, and 
W. P. Hinckley, Secretary of Good Will Home Asso¬ 
ciation, to do certain things for me. As you know, I 

ll 


12 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


am about three quarters of a mile from my office and 
I have not been off these premises since I arrived, 
nearly four weeks ago. Through the above men¬ 
tioned gentlemen I purchased a span of horses— 
“Tweedle dee” and “Tweedle dum”—a set of new 
harness and a supply of commercial fertilizer. I 
have all the seeds that I will need, but I have had to 
put in quite a hustle for these. I paid twelve dollars 
per bushel for seed beans, which makes the beans 
cost something less than a cent apiece, and I hope to 
sell at least thirty-six dollars’ worth next fall in 
order to get my seed back. 

Then I had a very exciting time getting three 
bushel of buckwheat to sow; there was none in the 
vicinity; by telephone I learned that there was none 
in Bangor and none in Portland in the seed stores; 
Bangor told me that I might possibly get some of a 
seed firm in New York City. Then I said I would 
have some buckwheat anyway, so, I appealed to W. 
F. Cobb & Co., Seedsmen, Franklin, Mass. They 
had sold out but thought they could get me some. I 
said I was good for three bushels and to have it sent 
immediately; in the meantime I had written to 
Aroostook County to a personal friend, to send me 
from three to six bushels if he could get it; I was 
bound to get that seed somewhere. My friend 
writes me that he has shipped me three bushels; I 
have heard from the other parties so now I have 
nine bushels of buckwheat on hand when I need only 
three; but think of it, buckwheat at three dollars 
per bushel! 

You may have the use of the house here when you 
arrive in June. It is my plan to pitch a tent in the 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


13 


orchard between two apple trees where I will be 
surrounded by fields of beans and potatoes; where I 
can hunt the tent caterpillar and watch the arrival 
of the potato beetle; where I can pat the horses on 
the neck each morning and tell the hired man—a 
Good Will boy—what to do and see that he does it. 
You will find “Old Glory” in front of the house when 
you arrive; the croquet ground will be green and 
trimmed and the little garden on the north side of 
the house will be doing its best. 

You may tell Esther that the birds are having 
more or less trouble in the Balm of Gilead tree. Mr. 
and Mrs. Bluebird visited the tenement about three 
weeks ago. Mr. Bluebird thought the surroundings 
were very agreeable and that they could not do better 
for themselves and family for the summer. Mrs. 
Bluebird said that she met Mr. and Mrs. Wood- 
Swallow, who occupied the house last Summer, and 
had quite an interview with them in Florida last 
December. The Wood-Swallows said that they no 
longer regarded the house in the Balm of Gilead a 
desirable rent; that it was all right last year, until 
one beautiful day when the Porter family—man, 
woman and three children—arrived all at once, and 
from that time on there was no end of noise and con¬ 
fusion. Mrs. Wood-Swallow had declared that the 
boy in the family had a small express cart which he 
used constantly and often it rattled and squeeked; 
that the girl, who was a little older, spent a great 
deal of time on the croquet ground, right under the 
tenement, knocking wooden balls about and often 
screaming; the effect upon the little Wood-Swallows 
was anything but beneficial. 


14 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


I didn’t hear Mrs. Bluebird say this to Mr. Blue¬ 
bird but she said something, and if she did not say 
that what did she say? Anyway, Mr. and Mrs. 
Bluebird decided to go to another tenement up in the 
orchard. About a week ago Mr. and Mrs. Wood- 
Swallow arrived from the south and after twittering 
for some time decided that they would run the risk 
for the summer; perhaps the Porters would not come 
anyway. Every thing was happily decided and ar¬ 
ranged when yesterday Mr. and Mrs. English Spar¬ 
row arrived upon the scene. They told Mr. and 
Mrs. Wood-Swallow that they were not going to 
occupy the tenement, as they did not want it, but 
they did not want Mr. and Mrs. Wood-Swallow to 
occupy it either; neither did they want the Bluebird 
family there, and they just wanted to make all the 
trouble that they possibly could. Mr. and Mrs. 
Wood-Swallow were very much agitated, and I could 
see that Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow were making them¬ 
selves very unpopular. Of course I did not hear the 
Sparrows say it, but they said something, and if 
they did not say that what did they say? Last night 
Mrs. Wood-Swallow was sitting on a limb of the 
Balm of Gilead in a brown study; she seemed very 
despondent and unsettled in her arrangements for 
the summer. 

You will arrive too late for the early Summer 
flowers of which there is great abundance, but you 
will find the hill-top green and beautiful. 

With love and best wishes to all, 

Affectionately yours, 



LETTER II 


Mr. M. H. L.- 

New York City. 

My dear Mr. L-: 

I am wondering if your memory is as good as 
mine. I have been mindful every day for several 
weeks that I told you I would soon write you a letter 
so long that you would cry, “stay thy hand.” But 
I have just reached the date when I can write the 
letter. You will see from the heading that I am 
neither at the Good Will office nor at my home, but 
at Applehurst. Applehurst is a distinct proposi¬ 
tion ; it is a place by itself, and stands out distinctly 
in my interest and affection. I told the Good Will 
boys and girls, the other morning, that Willow-Wood 
was my winter residence and that Applehurst was 
my summer and suburban home. The difference be¬ 
tween the two is this; at Willow-Wood I can see five 
or six houses at a time while at Applehurst I can see 
only one. 

Perhaps you recall that summer thirteen or 
fourteen years ago, when I had apparently overtaxed 
my nervous system and suffered a complete break¬ 
down; the collapse came on Commencement morn¬ 
ing about fifteen minutes after I had delivered the 
diplomas to a graduating class. The Trustees and 
Directors of the Good Will Home Association and 
other personal friends were very kind to me. Ber¬ 
muda and Clifton Springs and various other resorts 

15 




16 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


were proposed but I insisted upon it that there was 
just one way out of my difficulties, and explained 
that, if I should go into the Maine woods for a few 
weeks and have some young man for a companion, 
I was morally certain I would regain my health and 
nerve-poise and be back at my post of duty in due 
time. 

Henry C. Blake, a former Good Will boy, who had 
just completed his first year in college, was chosen 
for a companion. My friends had a doctor fit me 
out with a supply of medicine, and Blake and I start¬ 
ed for the Moosehead region. When we were ready 
to leave the landing in our rowboat for the little 
journey to the point where we were to pitch our tent, 
I told Blake that I wanted to go back to the settle¬ 
ment a whole man; that if I went back thinking that 
I had regained my health, I wanted to feel sure that 
it was nature’s recovery and that I had not been 
temporarily built up on drugs. Thereupon I dropped 
the vials of medicine into Wilson pond and so far as 
I know they are still there. 

Six weeks of camping, rowing, swimming, fishing 
and good fellowship, seems to have done all I could 
ask, so we returned home. 

The day after my arrival home I went into the 
office and thought I would take up my work again 
but something seemed to run up and down my spinal 
cord; my nerves quivered and I broke—not as severe 
as the breaks that had driven me out of the office, 
but of the same nature. I reached the conclusion 
then and there that I would probably never enter 
the Good Will office for duty again. I walked out 
into the open and said: “I must find something to 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


17 


do.” It was August and I went into the field and 
ploughed. It was great to hold the plough on an 
August day and hear the coulter rip the green turf 
and to follow it across the field, and then, bareheaded 
and barefooted, swing back for another furrow, and 
keep it up hour after hour. It helped and so did the 
other outdoor activities, but I was simply trying 
desperately to get into trim for my work and that 
very fact seemed to retard recovery. Thus I was 
forced to the conclusion that I would probably never 
return to the office anyway, and I conceived a busi¬ 
ness proposition which greatly pleased me. 

Did I ever tell you how I went into the jelly busi¬ 
ness? In those days the pure-food laws had not 
been enacted. Raspberry jelly, for instance con¬ 
sisted of a percentage of coloring matter, acid, glu¬ 
cose and water, and sometimes a very small percent¬ 
age of fruit juice; other jellies were not much better. 
It was in October when I chanced to see a woman 
making some preserves, and it occurred to me that 
I could be of real service if I could develop a “from 
kitchen to consumer” jelly business. As soon as I 
had grasped the idea I discovered that it was too late 
to do anything that year; the fruit season was past, 
aside from the fact that a few crab-apples were still 
available. 

I hustled. In my hustle I forgot about the Good 
Will office and my eagerness to get back my nerves. 
The scheme was very simple and involved putting- 
twelve tumblers of jelly into a box guaranteeing that 
said jelly was composed of the following ingredi¬ 
ents : fruit juice, granulated sugar and spring water. 


18 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


The first box that I sent out brought me the full 
price and sold seven other boxes for me. 

But materials were scarce so late in the season, 
and I could only lay plans for the following year. I 
studied labels; whenever at a hotel or restaurant, 
whatever I ordered for a meal I included some kind 
of jelly just to convince myself that jellies thus 
served were poor stuff at best, and that I had a clear 
field before me. In February I put in a preliminary 
order for jelly tumblers with the understanding that 
other orders would follow in March, for fall fruits. 

One day in March I opened my eyes to the fact 
that without any effort or planning on my part I had 
my nerves back, was in the best of health and there 
was absolutely no reason why I should not take up 
my chosen work of Good Will again. I dropped the 
jelly business then and there, and assumed at once 
the responsibilities of the Good Will office. One 
morning in May when twelve barrels of jelly tumb¬ 
lers arrived in one shipment, my wife said to me: 

“Isn’t this expensive business? These things 
which are coming to us we haven’t any use for now. 
What will we do with them ?” 

I assured the good woman that I was entirely sat¬ 
isfied. Any goods which I ordered when I was in 
the jelly business I would have to pay for when they 
came; but the money thus spent would represent the 
sum total of my medicine bill from the time I col¬ 
lapsed entirely, on Commencement day in June, to 
the time I returned to my office a restored man the 
first of March. 

Evangelist D. L. Moody used to tell the story of a 
sinner who, for a long time, was under conviction. 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


19 


He was burdened with the sense of his sins and could 
gain no relief day or night. After suffering in mind 
for many days and finding no relief he crawled un¬ 
der a railroad bridge and prayed; while he was 
praying under the railroad bridge the burden rolled 
off and he became very happy. From that time on, 
according to Mr. Moody’s story, this man was fond 
of telling his fellowmen that if they found them¬ 
selves burdened with the sense of sin and would 
crawl under a railroad bridge and pray, relief 
would surely come to their troubled souls. Mr. 
Moody used to relate this incident, if I remember 
rightly, to illustrate how little sense some people 
exercise in religious matters. Many a time, in the 
last twelve years, when I have met some fellow 
mortal suffering from nervous prostration or vainly 
trying to recover from a nervous collapse, I have 
said: 

“Now if you really want to recover and be as 
strong as ever, you just go into the jelly business 
‘from kitchen to consumer’—twelve tumblers for 
three dollars,—it cured me, why should it not cure 
you?” 

But times have changed; pure food laws are now 
in operation; not so much glucose, colored with 
analine dyes and tinctured with some kind of acid, 
is sold for pure fruit jelly as in former years. Be¬ 
sides I don’t believe the cure would work with me 
again, if I should try it. But last March I began to 
be conscious that I was on the high road to the same 
condition that I got into thirteen years ago. I had 
been shut up all winter; a weak ankle had effectually 
prevented my usual walk from my home to my office 


20 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


/ 

and back, because the snows were deep and I felt 
the old tremors and quivers returning. I saw that 
another collapse was inevitable unless I headed it 
off. A trip into the woods, and a stay there until 
nature had done her work, would have been my 
course had we been living in an ordinary year. 

But this is not an ordinary year; it is an extra¬ 
ordinary one and some things which a man could 
have done wisely and happily two years ago, cannot 
be so happily and wisely done under the present con¬ 
ditions. In April I decided instead of going into the 
woods I would get my radical change both in activi¬ 
ties and in line of thought by leaving the office, tak¬ 
ing up my abode at Applehurst and devoting the 
summer to doing my bit toward preventing a food 
shortage next winter. 

Of course I could not be here alone and so I hired 
a former Good Will boy. I am the proprietor and 
he boards with me. I am waiting now for six acres 
of potatoes which I have planted and four acres of 
beans and other seeds representing quite a sum of 
money to show themselves above ground, and to 
prove my wisdom in coming here instead of going 
into the woods. The change which I have experi¬ 
enced physically and in my nervous system, sur¬ 
prises me. 

You must not think that I have done all the 
ploughing or all the harrowing, because the six acres 
planted with potatoes and three of the four planted 
with beans have been harrowed five times, but I have 
done my share of it. Just why I should, morning 
after morning for the last four weeks, wake up at 
precisely twenty minutes to five by my watch, I can- 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


21 


not tell. But it naturally follows that I am ready 
to retire at eight-fifteen in the evening. 

I wish you could walk through my little orchard of 
ninety-six trees today; you would say, as a friend 
said yesterday, as she walked through it, that it 
seemed like a veritable fairyland. I hear much 
about orange groves and the beauty of the orange 
blossom, but I cannot think that an orange grove can 
be more charming than a New England apple 
orchard, when everything would look like a snow 
bank but for the delicate blush of pink. 

I am going to write you another letter in a few 
days but don’t be discouraged; it will not be as long 
or as irksome or as common-place as this commu¬ 
nication. 


Very cordially yours, 



LETTER III 


My Dear Miss G—: 

I have not paid as much attention to birds this 
year as I did in the summer of 1917. I have been 
somewhat confused and vacillating but have at last 
reached a solution of a difficult problem in my love 
for bird life. The problem is stated in a single 
word; that word, if I will put it into black and 
white in all its suggestions of feline maraudering, of 
preying upon fledglings, just out of their nest, is 
“cats”—just plain, commonplace cats. Nearly all 
of my neighbors keep cats; it is true I keep a gun, 
but you know what endless animosities might be 
stirred if I should shoot a cat. . And so after much 
meditation and a severe mental struggle to overcome 
my desire to issue an edict that, wherever there is 
land in the management of which I can have any 
voice, all cats must go, I surrender. 

Such an edict would banish cats from Good Will 
Farm, Willow-Wood, Applehurst and Cloverslope, 
that is, if the edict were obeyed; but think of the 
heartburnings, the bitterness and the woe. And so 
I have surrendered. The cats may live—they may 
live in all but one place. But somewhat removed 
from all the dwellings in which I have any special 
interest is a tract of land where there are some birds 
and where more can probably be encouraged to live. 
This area, in the vicinity of the “Tenterden Tab¬ 
lets,” is to be devoted to bird life and such things. 

22 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


23 


For a cat to venture on that area will be as danger¬ 
ous as for a hun to take a stroll in “No Man’s Land” 
or worse, for the cat will stand no chance at all. 

I used to enjoy a household cat—more or less. 
Our old cat “Jim” was the mother of more than 
twenty kittens in her life time and her descendants 
are fairly well scattered in Maine and Massachu¬ 
setts. I think there was royal blood in Jim’s veins. 
I inferred it from the dignified steppings when she 
crossed the road in front of our house to hunt for 
young birds, and the still more dignified manner—I 
would say “lordly” if her sex would admit it—in 
which she would return with a bird between her 
teeth. 

But one day Jim carried her prowess a step too 
far—several steps too far. A pair of meadow larks 
appeared early one spring and I was delighted. If 
anything could be done in the line of protection I 
was bound to do it; meadow larks are a delight to my 
ornithological eye the long season through, and they 
stay longer than almost any other migratory bird. 
Oh! if these meadow larks would only nest near us, 
on our own premises at Willow-Wood, (it was before 
Applehurst days) I would be happy indeed. After 
much inspecting of the neighborhood these feathered 
possibilities of neighborliness decided to locate in 
the grass-field across the road in front of the house. 
For weeks the parent birds were busy; they would 
light in the tall grass close to the road and watch me 
cautiously until I had passed; they would light on a 
fence rail and give precisely the same call they used 
to give a half century ago in Guilford, Conn., and we 
all knew in those days that they said “You can’t see 


24 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


me/' Some where out in the field, I didn’t know 
where and I didn’t want to know, they were rearing 
a nest full: there could be no doubt of that. Then 
one day Jim stalked out of the grass and across the 
road with a pomposity that would have been redicu- 
lous were it not dispicable, carrying a young meadow 
lark in her jaws. When sunset came Jim had 
brought, in one day, seven birdlings—the whole 
brood—and deposited them, one at a time, dead as 
a chimney brick, on the gravelled walk. 

Jim is dead. I feared the parent birds would 
resent the treatment accorded them and never come 
again, but they liked us so well—all but Jim—that 
they came the next spring as though no tragedy had 
occurred; but only think! There should have been at 
least three pairs, and would have been, no doubt, 
but for Jim. 

But bird tragedies are not all due to feline fero¬ 
ciousness, and even if they were, I would not lay the 
blame all on the cats, treacherous and unreasoning 
as they are; the birds are partly responsible. One 
would think that birds recognizing cats as their 
mortal enemy, would avoid premises where a cat is 
known to reside. It is not true however, for robins 
and sparrows will seek locations for their nests, 
close to houses where these enemies are harbored. 

But listen to this: Last spring a pair of swallows 
decided to build under the veranda, north side of 
the house here at Applehurst; they located directly 
over the door; the nest was so low that I could easily 
touch it with my hand while standing in the door¬ 
way. It was exceedingly interesting to watch them. 
They seemed to have realized that, on account of the 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


25 


public position of their nest it must be of the very 
best quality. A finer example of mud masonry I 
have never seen; their restless enthusiasm and exhi¬ 
bitions of domestic bliss, as the work proceeded, 
were beautiful. Each little load of mud had to be 
discussed, the exact place where it must be located 
had to be considered and there was great delight, in 
their little feathered breasts, when each portion was 
firmly placed. 

Then they would twitter about the glad day when 
the nest would be completed and full of tiny eggs; 
the gladder day when, in place of the eggs, there 
would be swallowings (I think that is the word they 
used) and the climax of it all, when the dear little 
swallowings, faithfully fed and protected, would at 
last fill the nest and then fly. 

But what happened? Why, one morning there 
was a cluster of egg shells upon the veranda floor, 
beneath the nest which showed the period of incu¬ 
bation was over, the swallowings had arrived in the 
nest, and the shells of the eggs had been cast aside. 
The parents were very busy for a day or two provid¬ 
ing for the family—the mouths so suddenly yawning, 
the stomachs to be filled. 

Then one morning one of the number was found 
lying dead beneath the nest. It had died in its home 
and the parents had disposed of the little corpse in 
this way—just dropped it. My grand-babies—I 
still call them grand-babies, though they are fast 
leaving their babyhood behind them—buried the 
little body with such care and ceremony as, in their 
immature judgment, the circumstances required, the 
two older fearing that little Jean might go out 


26 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


surreptitiously and exhume the remains later, just 
out of curiosity. 

Three days later another little dried-up corpse 
was found under the nest, and that had to be dis¬ 
posed of in proper manner. Here was the blighting of 
parental plans; the thwarting of parental dreams and 
instinct; and then, miserabile dicta —“miserable 
dictu” is a relic of my Latin school days and means 
“sorrowful to relate”—the real tragedy occurred. 
About nine o'clock, I think it was, one morning, the 
mother of my grand-babies heard a fluttering sound 
—an unusual noise on the veranda—and hastened to 
see what it might mean. One of the parents, 
whether Mr. Swallow or Mrs. Swallow, I cannot tell, 
was hanging from the nest by a long slender thread 
around its neck. The mother could not liberate it 
herself, but she sent one of her children on a hurried 
trip across to Clover-Slope and begged the woman 
who dwells there to come over and help. The good 
neighbor hurried, but it was too late to help; seizing 
the shears she cut the thread, but the bird fell life¬ 
less to the floor. The remaining parent kept about 
the task—made journey after journey for food for 
what remained in the nest; and, then, I am suppos¬ 
ing that what was left of the little family was big 
enough to leave its home. So I lost my interest in 
that corner of the veranda and paid no further at¬ 
tention to it until August twelfth when I chanced to 
look at it; a spider, the kind I think that, back in 
Solomon’s time, used to “make her way into king’s 
palaces,” had covered the beautiful circular entrance 
to the mud-masonry with a filmy web. That was 
the end. 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


27 


But let me tell you that, just as all bird tragedies 
are not chargable to cats, so not all attempts on the 
part of birds to raise families result tragically. 

For instance on the twenty-second of August I 
took a census of our purple martins. I went and 
tapped on each pole that supported a martin house, 
and had a man count the birds as they flew out. 
There were sixty-nine martins, and the next morn¬ 
ing I discovered that I had overlooked one bird 
house; so there must have been eighty purple mar¬ 
tins on the premises at that time, at least. I cannot 
tell how many families of blue birds (Sialia sialis) 
have been reared this summer at Applehurst and at 
Good Will, but one hears their mellow voices all the 
time, and they are flying about in little families or 
flocks of five or six. Partridge were successful in 
the woods between Good Will and Applehurst; the 
bobolinks have been much in evidence; for some 
reason, the bluejays which, in this vicinity, have 
usually been rather retiring and kept to the deep 
woods, except in the autumn, became unnecessarily 
bold and neighborly. A pair of golden wood-peck¬ 
ers had a glorious summer raising a brood of little 
ones in the deep hole bored by themselves into one 
of the biggest trees at Willow-Wood, close to my 
sitting room; black ducks nested along the river 
bank opposite the Quincy Building; and of all the 
warblers, thrushes, sparrows, meadow larks, I have 
no time to tell you, and the exact specie of owls that 
successfully raised a good sized family in the Pines 
—a family so noisy o’nights that the boys in the 
Good Will camp were kept awake, I cannot write. 

By the way, do you remember that I used to 


28 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


preach a sermon on the swallow, and among other 
things I used to say that while some birds fly on a 
low level, in their spring and fall migrations, the 
swallow travels at a great height? I believed the 
statement to be true or I would not have made it. 
We see ducks, geese and other birds in their flights, 
but the swallows are never seen: hence the reasona¬ 
ble conclusion that they travel “away up.” That 
was when birds could fly but man had not taken to 
wing. Now men are flying, and one aviator reports 
that ducks, in their migrations usually fly at an alti¬ 
tude of five thousand feet and that plovers journey 
at about six thousand five hundred feet. Another 
aviator reports that, while flying at an altitude of 
nine thousand five hundred feet, he saw flocks of 
birds high above him, which, by the aid of glasses, 
he was able to identify. They were swallows. So 
you may know now, not on my conclusions, but upon 
the testimony of aviators why we never see swallows 
and some other birds as they journey north or south 
of us; they are too high up to be seen. 

Cordially yours, 



LETTER IV 


My dear Miss K.: 

Up here at Applehurst, where I have come for the 
summer, I have two of your recent letters which my 
assistants in the Good Will office understand I will 
want to answer. I have read and re-read them, and 
you have probably wondered why you have received 
no acknowledgment. The editorial in the last Good 
Will Record explains it but I do not feel sure how 
carefully you read the editorials. You have probably 
noticed that there is a difference in folk. Some peo¬ 
ple never read the editorials; some never read any¬ 
thing but the editorials; I do not know where you 
belong in this division of humanity. The statement 
in the last editorial that the editor has ten acres 
under plough—six acres for potatoes, four acres for 
beans and about two acres for buckwheat and a 
garden may have attracted your notice. I presume 
that “six plus four plus two equals ten” looks like 
poor arithmetic to you; but the apparent discrep¬ 
ancy is due to an uncertainty as to just how much 
land I can get ploughed for buckwheat. 

On account of your experience with poultry, I 
have thought of you frequently, of late, as I attempt¬ 
ed to manage a lone setting hen for which I paid 
one dollar—warranted to set. I made two other at¬ 
tempts at raising chicks, since I landed at Apple¬ 
hurst, but the other two were lamentable failures. 
One of the hens I returned to her former owner; 

29 


30 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


one hen, although she did a prodigious amount of 
clucking, which seemed auspicious, declined to brood 
over the eggs I furnished her, and in a few days she 
began to lay; she is now laying strictly fresh eggs. 

I would not have had anything to do with hens, 
because I was not attempting general farming and 
did not intend to reside at Applehurst only a few 
weeks—just long enough to plant and till and har¬ 
vest—but for the following reason: 

We once employed a man at Good Will who knew 
everything. I cannot think of anything connected 
with agriculture which this man did not know; and 
he knew an amazing lot of stuff which was not true. 
He built a number of hen houses; these structures 
were, of course, made in the most scientific, up-to- 
date, nothing-to-be-added manner. One of these 
houses has been moved to Applehurst for the ac¬ 
commodation of a former occupant of the place, and 
it seemed to be just begging for poultry. So I set 
a hen. 

This up-to-date edifice had, among other conven¬ 
iences for biddies, a row of nests about four feet 
above the floor; the hens were to approach these 
nests from the rear; but the roof of the said nests 
was on hinges and could be lifted by anyone who was 
in front. Here I placed a Barred Plymouth Rock 
hen and she at once entered upon her duties. She 
proved to be a very interesting personality. Each 
morning, with regularity that was gratifying, biddy 
would jump down from her nest for food and drink, 
and in so doing she would flip one egg out of the 
nest which, with its four-foot fall, would be shattered 
on the floor. At first I could see no benefit in the 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


31 


arrangement; but I saw later that there was one 
advantage though I think only one. If a hen is set¬ 
ting under these circumstances any one can tell, with 
a little trouble, just how many days she has been 
there. He has only to enter the hen house, quietly 
approach the front of the long line of roofed nests, 
gently move the hen to one side and count the eggs; 
the difference between thirteen, the number of eggs 
originally committed to her care, and the number of 
eggs in the nest shows the number of days she has 
been sitting. This order of things went on with in¬ 
teresting regularity, amounting to almost a rythm, 
until there were only five eggs left. But she had six 
more days to set before the incubation would be com¬ 
plete. It looks as if she must have become conscious 
of this, for she suddenly decided to flip no more eggs 
out of the nest; she refused, in fact, to leave the nest 
at all after that, until she abandoned it for good and 
took three chicks with her, leaving two unhatched 
eggs in the nest. It must have been quite a jolt for 
those little chicks, the greatest jolt they had ever 
experienced, when they struck the floor four feet be¬ 
neath the up-to-date, liftable-roofed, nothing-to-be- 
added apartment; but when I found them on the 
floor with their mother, they appeared quite chirk, 
just as if nothing unexpected had happened. 

Two of my grandchildren arrived at Applehurst 
that very day to spend the summer; they are six 
and four years of age. It was quite natural that 
they should make a trip about the farm promptly 
upon their arrival. An hour after they got here I 
happened to go to the kitchen, and the young woman 
who had arrived in the same carriage with the chil- 


32 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


dren, and who was to have charge of the culinary 
department, remarked: 

‘‘The children have just brought in two fresh eggs; 
it is beautiful to have nice fresh-laid eggs come in 
this way, if it is all right for the children to gather 
them. Had they ought to do it?” 

I was interested at once. 

“Where did you get those eggs, children,” I said 
to them as they arrived from another trip of ex¬ 
ploration. 

“Out of a nest in the hen house,” was the triumph¬ 
ant reply. 

(Grand tableau.) 

It was with the greatest reluctance that I ex¬ 
plained to the young woman that it is not specially 
healthful to have eggs that have been unsuccessfully 
incubated for three weeks brought in as “fresh.” 

Very cordially yours, 



LETTER V 


My dear Miss K.: 

In a former treatise, my good friend, I mentioned 
the fact that I did not care to touch poultry while 
at Applehurst. I regard the hen as a rather irre¬ 
sponsible, fickle creature at best. Anybody who 
rides in an automobile knows how it is; the hen is 
always on the wrong side of the road, and as you 
approach her, if you are going at, say twenty miles 
or more per hour, she will decide to cross over to the 
other side and to safety; then when she gets half 
way across, she suddenly changes her mind and starts 
back for the wrong side again. To meet that kind 
of a disposition occasionally, and on the road, only, 
is not bad; but to have to live with it, and to have 
to feed it and water it, and surrender to it two or 
three times a day is another thing. No; I did not 
want any poultry. But I purchased that Barred 
Plymouth Rock sitting hen and she just attended to 
business. 

That hen was a nucleus that was likely to grow; 
that hen was a camel that got its head into my tent; 
that hen was the precursor of petty annoyances 
multiplied. 

Biddy Number One did so finely, and seemed so 
eminently sensible and so tractible, that I advertised 
for another hen “ready to set,” and bought her— 
another dollar. I put her on a nest near Number 
One; she got off. I waited until dark and put her 

33 


34 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


on again, and foolishly put some eggs under her; 
she scorned those eggs and got off at daybreak; it 
was annoying. 

She developed uncanny traits. I visited her three 
times and each time she was sitting on the partition 
between her nest and that occupied by Number One 
and was clucking, rustling her feathers and trying 
to persuade Number One that she was a ninny to be 
cultivating the domestic virtues when she might be 
going about like herself, agitating and possibly 
bringing about some reform. 

I glared at her and she clucked at me; I called her 
an old suffragist and she clucked again. I lost my 
temper and said: “You old ninny, if you don’t do 
your duty, I will send you back where you came 
from,” and finally, after the third day, I sold her to 
my neighbor for just what I paid. There is a 
sneaking suspicion that the price of sitting hens ad¬ 
vanced about twenty-five per cent the three days I 
owned her—most everything else advanced as much 
about that time—including grain for horses, seed- 
buckwheat and everything else that I needed; but I 
sold her for less than cost—one dollar; nothing for 
what she ate while on my hands. I sighed not at 
her going; she was a white Leghorn, pure bred, and 
I fear might be warranted “not to set.” 

But the virus had got under my skin, and was 
likely to break out any moment; and finally it did 
break out, and when I heard that another neighbor 
had a hen—a Barred Plymouth Rock ready to sit— 
I sent a dollar and a boy brought me the new acqui¬ 
sition. I took her out where Number Two had run 
her brief, riotous course and deposited her. For 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


35 


three days that creature acted worse than her pre¬ 
decessor. I would carry out some corn and throw it 
on the floor and she would go for it as though she 
had not seen food for a week, though food was all 
about her; I would carry out clear, cold water and fill 
the dish and she would poke her toothless bill into 
it and then throw her head into the air and point her 
bill upward in a perfect ecstacy while the water ran 
down her long neck into her—well, probably into her 
gizzard, and then she would cluck some more. 

On the evening of the third day I started for the 
little tar-paper-roof-hen-house to see if I could gaze 
at that hen and not lose my temper and go all to 
pieces morally. The sun was setting; there was 
almost a heavenly calm in the atmosphere as I 
walked past the clothes poles in the back yard, and 
passed the barn where my horses were peacefully 
munching their food; the full rich notes of a Wil¬ 
son’s thrush floated across the green field from some¬ 
where in the distance—the first thrush’s note I had 
heard this year; it was almost idyllic—the atmos¬ 
phere, the blue heavens, the even-song of the new 
arrival from southland. 

I reached the hen-house and looked through the 
wire netting that takes the place of a board wall. 
As soon as she saw me all her back feathers stood 
up straight; she quacked and clucked—“quak, cluck, 
cluck”—just like that. It was too much for tired 
nature. 

“You idiotic, old hag” I said, “You, you—” 

“Quak, cluck, cluck,” said Number Three, just like 
that again. 


36 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


'‘You, you! Pd throw this tin pail at your head if 
you weren’t—” 

“Quak, cluck, cluck” she said, and I listened. 
Then Number Three said to me, said she: “I’ve been 
thinking it over, and have about decided what to do 
but I may change my mind. Listen! If you will 
keep me supplied with corn, and a few apple par¬ 
ings, and fill up the drinking dish twice a day and 
put some gravel on the floor for the health of my 
gizzard, I will sit; I may change my mind, but I 
contemplate three weeks of devotion to a hen’s 
greatest task.” 

I will not take oath that she said this; but if she 
did not say it what did she say? She has been work¬ 
ing for the government for three weeks and I have 
eight fluffy chicks, full of curiosity and beginning to 
learn the wishes of their nervous, fussy mother. 

Cordially yours, 



LETTER VI 


Mr. M. H. L.:— 

New York City. 

My Dear Mr. M.: 

You make me glad and sorry. It is always a 
pleasure to receive a communication from you and 
the last letter is no exception; but it does not give 
me pleasure to learn that you are not to visit me in 
Maine this summer. Your decision involves a great 
deal; among other things it means that long before 
the harvest is over in October—before the harvest 
moon is full—I will be in a state of mind trying to 
put off a trip to New York until the proper time; if 
we are not to lunch together on the porch at Apple- 
hurst, we must surely enjoy such a function together 
in the city, as early as I can arrange it. Without 
your visit the summer is going to be a little longer 
than I had anticipated; but my self-imposed banish¬ 
ment from my usual walk and haunts will be half 
over the twenty-eighth of this month. Sometimes 
the last half of a melon seems smaller than the half 
which has already been devoured. 

I have had much pleasure, and real profit, thus 
far. If the financial gain divides with successive 
attacks of rust, blight, bugs and what not, in my 
fields, until the balance is on the wrong side, there 
will still be a profit. A man told me recently of one 
of his neighbors, who said that, when he took a din¬ 
ner into the field in a pail, he always ate the pie first; 

37 


38 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


then if he choked to death he would have had the 
best of the dinner anyway. It is literally true that, 
if the harvest is never gathered, I will have had the 
best part of the summer’s proposition anyway—the 
joy of the planting and watching; in the meantime I 
have my nerves back again. 

I went upon the hill today and looked over my 
fields. The potato rows are long green stripes and 
make a fair appearance, though there are better 
looking potato fields near by. I went between two 
rows of spuds and turnd up the green leaves. A 
thorough spraying is a necessity at once. It is re¬ 
lated that once on a time the poet, Alfred Tennyson, 
and Mathew Arnold were walking through the lake 
county in England when they came out on the brow 
of a hill and looked far across a valley. In one of 
the pastures was a flock of brown sheep quietly 
feeding. Matthew Arnold attempted to describe the 
scene and made several dignified comparisons. None 
of them seemed to please Tennyson, who finally said: 

“No; it looks like nothing but a great blanket full 
of fleas.” 

A potato field, properly cultivated, is a fine and 
orderly sight; but this morning when I viewed mine 
and it looked like a great blanket,—in green and 
brown stripes, I added, “full of bugs and potato 
bugs at that.” 

But there are many compensations for the kind of 
life I am living. I have triumphed over weeds and 
other pests in my garden and I am sure that you 
would commend me, were you here to see it. But 
only yesterday I was pulling weeds. Please note 
that I say “pulling weeds,” which is entirely differ- 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


39 


ent from weeding a garden. “Weeding” is neces¬ 
sary in every garden fertile enough to be worth 
cultivating; it consists of picking out the little weeds 
when they are from a fourth of an inch to an inch 
in height. Weeding is respectable, dignified and 
orthodox; it needs neither explanation or apology. 
“Pulling weeds” in a garden is a confession of fickle¬ 
ness, neglect or misfortune. If one is enthused with 
the gardening spirit in April and plants beyond 
what he will be willing to keep in good order till 
harvest time; if one goes fishing for a few days when 
weeding should be in progress; if one is taken sick 
just as the weeds are showing themselves, then the 
garden is threatened with disaster. The weeds out¬ 
grow the vegetables until weeding is impossible and 
“pulling weeds” the only remedy. And one must 
excuse himself or explain the condition of things, or 
describe the circumstances which led to the collapse 
of the garden. 

I am beginning to get the first fruits from the 
garden itself and a few weeks, now, and I will be 
able to report on the final outcome of this farming 
proposition. I could not help being interested this 
morning in the published report of a meeting in Bos¬ 
ton, when one of the questions under consideration 
was: “How can we reduce the surplus potato crop 
this fall!” And the leading suggestion was that 
everybody eat potatoes three times a day. So please 
watch the market and as soon as the great tumble 
in the price of potatoes comes, due to the enormous 
crop now predicted, please remember, that if I have 
to sell potatoes at twenty-five cents per bushel, 
which have cost me one dollar per bushel to produce, 


40 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


I am ruined financially; order spuds for breakfast, 
spuds for lunch, spuds for dinner and if you ever eat 
between meals, if you love me, make it spuds. 

Cordially yours, 



LETTER VII 


My dear Mr. P.: 

We have had several thunder showers at Apple- 
hurst recently. Day before yesterday, August first, 
the shower was unusually heavy; there was a near¬ 
ness about it—a proximity that was startling. 

Two days before we had a heavy shower and Cecil 
said to me: 

“I am already and if the barn is struck it will be 
my first duty to get the horses out.” 

I think it was the first time, in a shower, that the 
possibility of house or barn being struck was ever 
mentioned to me. Of course, there is always such 
a possibility, but in my own family it is never men¬ 
tioned, however keenly it may be felt. 

So Cecil was ready but nothing happened. 

July thirty-first an oil painting, to be placed in 
the library at Good Will had arrived, and wishing 
to unpack it myself, I had ordered it sent up to me. 
It had been shipped on a roller, and the roll was 
standing on end in the northwest corner of the 
northwest room. For sometime while Cecil and I 
were eating supper, August first, I had it in mind 
to say to him: 

“If the barn is struck in this shower that’s coming 
up, do just as you planned to do the other day—get 
the horses out. If the house is struck remember 
that the most valuable thing in it is a roll in the cor¬ 
ner of the sitting room—save that first,” but I could 

41 


42 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


see that Cecil was a bit nervous, and I had never in 
my life discussed the probability of destruction by 
lightning while a shower was in progress and I de¬ 
cided not to mention it. Two days before Mr. and 
Mrs. Porter and my three little grandchildren had 
gone into the Pines to stop a day or two; they were 
there when the shower came up August first. 
Shortly before ten o'clock in the evening, Cecil and 
I were sitting at a table in the south room; it was 
the table on which I place the food for our meals, 
and we were both reading—or perhaps I had better 
say, appearing to read, because I do not think that 
either one of us was at all absorbed in the literature 
before us,—for the lightning was vivid and the 
thunder terrific. 

There came an explosion, as though a gun five 
times as large as an ordinary shot-gun had been 
discharged in the room. 

“What was that?" exclaimed Cecil. 

“This house has been struck" I replied. 

I stepped to the door that opens from the south 
room where we were, into the front hall. The hall 
was full of the dust of plaster, and blue smoke; 
pieces of plaster were scattered over the floor and 
the stairway. Seizing my flash light, I went up the 
stairway to see if the house was afire. The upper 
hall was full of plaster that had landed there from 
somewhere, but the ceiling overhead was unbroken. 
I hastened into the south room, the room directly 
over the one in which Cecil and I had been sitting; 
it is a good sized room—twelve feet by twenty with 
three windows. It is the room used as a kind of 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


43 


nursery, in which my three little grand-babies “sleep 
o’ nights”. 

It was a strange scene as I entered. There were 
the two little beds and the crib, with the mattresses 
in place, but the sheets and quilts had gone into 
the “Pines” for use during the stay of Mr. and Mrs. 
Porter and the children in “Alabama”. The south 
wall near the window had been ripped to pieces; the 
lathes cleaned of plaster were pointing in every 
direction, and some of them on the floor. The floor 
and the small mattresses were strewn with broken 
glass and plaster; across one of the little beds was 
a piece of plaster, which I have since measured, two 
and a half by two feet. Another piece of plaster 
about the same size had been hurled across the room 
and into the hallway—a distance of fifteen feet. 
The window frame on the south was knocked out. 
It was havoc indeed. I have not felt so much like 
singing the doxology, and then repeating, in a long 
time, as I did then and there. There was not a 
babe in the crib or a child in the room when it hap¬ 
pened. Had Mr. and Mrs. Porter not gone to the 
Pines when they did the three grand-babies would 
have been in their little beds; in all probability the 
mother would have been in the room as company 
for them through the storm, and I do not see how 
they could have escaped death. Either of the great 
pieces of plaster even, would have been deadly 
missies and the glass and the timbers, and the elec¬ 
tric fluid—think of it! 

Yesterday morning we inspected the outside of 
the house—the south end. The attic window has 
disappeared in full—probably knocked into the 


44 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


attic. One of the blinds was thrown thirty feet; a 
blind from the chamber window below it was car¬ 
ried thirty-five feet into the field. The bolt had hit 
the south end of the ridge, descending, ripping off 
clapboards, forty-nine courses, until within five feet 
of my head and then it had left the building; we 
don’t know where it went. That Cecil and I were 
not killed seems to me remarkable; that we were not 
stunned seems strange indeed; that the Porters 
were not in the room or the house at the time is a 
cause of special happiness on my part. I start in 
on repairs next week. 

Cordially yours, 



LETTER VIII 


My dear Mr. P.:— 

I am still at Applehurst but my enthusiasm is 
waning; at least I am not as enthusiastic as I was 
in May. I have tried to think why; have sought an 
explanation and I think I have it. Physically I be¬ 
lieve I am getting what I came after; but this re¬ 
sult of my summer’s activity bids fair to be my only 
satisfaction. 

As I see it now, all my life it has been my aim—I 
had never put it in this light before—to do the 
thing which would remain undone unless I did it. 
For instance, there was a time when I was going to 
paint a great picture—a picture as great as Rem- 
brant Peale’s “Court of Death” which had made a 
profound impression upon my boyish heart, and of 
course it would be a picture that would never be 
painted unless I did it. In my early educational day 
there was great satisfaction in teaching certain 
young fellows whom, I knew, would not be in school 
except as I was keeping them there. 

In entering the ministry I had a feeling—I have 
never formulated it before—that there were ser¬ 
mons which would never be preached unless I did 
it; later on, the controlling motive that took me into 
the Sunday School missionary field was the feeling 
that there were communities that would never be 
organized unless I did the organizing. 

My longest continued effort was to be the found- 

45 


46 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


ing of a philanthropic and educational institution 
that the world needed, but which would never exist 
unless I devoted my life to it. 

I have never felt like devoting my years to farm¬ 
ing. I can state now why it was so; I did not mind 
the work, for I have worked harder and put in long¬ 
er days year after year than any farmer I know; 
I did not under-estimate the importance of agri¬ 
culture, the very foundation of all other industries 
and all activities. But,—and I see it now—I was 
conscious that every foot of land that needed to be 
tilled would be tilled by others; all the farm products 
the world needed would be forth-coming without my 
interest or assistance. Why then should I spend 
my life doing things that were not called for by 
conditions? 

All this changed when the public was urged to 
plant, till and garner in order to prevent world wide 
calamity. If it had become necessary to plough up 
college campus and public lawns, and golf courses, 
and backyards, in order to save the world from star¬ 
vation, then the time had come when I could be 
interested personally in producing food. So it came 
about that I ploughed the twelve acres—more or less 
as deeds are accustomed to state—and devoted much 
time, in fact all my time, to the project. In my 
own thoughts it was not a question of market but 
of real need. 

But now that meetings are being held to decide 
what can be done with the enormous potato crop it 
looks as though my personal devotion to agriculture 
was just as necessary this summer, as it was a few 
years ago when potatoes were only twenty-five cents 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


47 


a bushel, because they were not needed. I have 
seen or heard nothing in two weeks that indicates 
that the fruits of my summer’s activity will be 
wanted; and in that case the cost of the summer’s 
operations can be charged up to the radical change 
of thought and activity which had become my per¬ 
sonal necessity. And it is worth it. 

Repairs on the lightning-afflicted house in which 
I am passing the summer will be completed tonight. 

Cecil remains with me and is doing faithful work 
and taking good care of my horses. I have hired 
another boy for a few days; this second boarder is 
in trouble of a peculiar kind and has no place to go 
and no means of getting there if he had. He has— 
or thinks he has—a father, a brother and a sister— 
somewhere in this wide world but he does not know 
where they are, or what manner of people, save 
that he was rescued from his father when he was 
eleven years old. He is now seventeen and will 
work for me till he has earned enough for a start in 
life. So I am cooking for two boys instead of one 
as I had planned. 

And since he came I have made a discovery; per¬ 
haps I had better say that I am confronted by a 
fact. Of course I have not had time yet to prove 
the following proposition, but I am studying it care¬ 
fully, and have no doubt but that I can prove it in 
time. Proposition: “If two boys are of the same 
age and of equal size and appetite, then the amount 
of food consumed by the two at any given meal will 
be equal to twice the amount consumed by either 
one of them at the same meal.” If I do not succeed 


48 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


in proving this I shall appeal to you for assistance, 
for I feel sure it can be done. 

Yesterday I had my potatoes sprayed again with 
a most villainous mixture of blue vitrol, arsenate of 
lead and lime. It was the third time I have had it 
done. Today it did not seem as though the potatoes 
could survive the day, the way the bugs are eating 
them, but I had hopes of this spraying—the other 
poisonous visitations upon them do not seem to have 
made much impression. I went out this morning 
expecting to find the field strewn with the lifeless 
forms of the enemy, but lievlier bugs never tackled 
a six acre potato field. I had an interview with 
those bugs. They said that they were more than 
pleased with the way I had treated them this sum¬ 
mer. They said that all they had asked or expected 
was that they might have the potato vines for their 
own use; it never occurred to them that I would fur¬ 
nish all sorts of condiments and sweets to go with 
their usual food. They said that these things I had 
been putting on their food were great appetizers; 
they were just like sugar and cider-vinegar on my 
lettuce, or salad dressing on cubes of cold potatoes 
served on my own table. I began to feel apprehen¬ 
sive. It looks as though I have precipitated a 
period of ujnwonted dissipation among these re¬ 
pulsive things. All day long, as I have visited the 
place, I have found an endless round of pink teas, 
picnic dinners, wedding breakfasts, and similar 
forms of enjoyment in progress. About noon I dis¬ 
covered two bugs that seemed to be dizzy; they 
were pale and bloated, but I learned upon investi¬ 
gation that they were cases of gluttony brought 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


49 


about by the highly seasoned food; they were not 
cases of poison as I at first thought. I feel at this 
writing as though I would like to lay an endless 
train of dynamite until it extended between each 
and every pair of rows of potatoes, touch it off 
and blow the whole dissipated aggregation to 
smithereens. 


Cordially yours, 



LETTER IX 


My dear Miss G.:— 

Because of your interest in bird life I fancy that 
you may be interested to know that, although I am 
a farmer, I have not lost my interest in our feath¬ 
ered friends because of familiarity with them. 

No one has better opportunity than the farmer, 
to become acquainted with the birds of his locality 
as well as other birds in their annual migration. 
When I came here April twenty-eighth, the juncos 
had arrived trusting and confidential. They visited 
the wood-pile, the pine tree near the front door; they 
flitted around the barn and almost persuaded me 
that they had serious intentions of stopping here all 
summer; but I think they were bound further north, 
anyway they vanished in a few days. Some birds 
which I did not at first recognize, but later identified 
as the Blackburnian warbler paid me a brief visit; 
they are due in the time of the apple blossoms, but 
apple blossoms were very late this year, and the 
Blackburnian could not wait. A pair of chestnut¬ 
sided warblers nested half a mile away on another 
farm. Others of the warblers spent the summer at 
“Applehurst” and nested, probably, in the border 
of the woods. Two or three horned larks called 
the second day that I was here, but they said or 
seemed to say: 

“It’s a long way to Labrador, but our hearts are 
right there.” 


50 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


51 


I did not see them again. 

There is no place on “Applehurst” suitable for an 
American crow to build a nest though they “flew 
over my head” often and reared their young in the 
tall pines on neighboring farms; and their first 
cousins, the blue jays, were very noisy, until the 
first of June, with their unwelcome, metallic penny- 
trumpet calls. 

I thought, early in the season, that a pair of night 
hawks was going to rear its little family of two on 
some flat ledge; but they probably decided in favor 
of a flat roof in Waterville or Skowhegan. A 
phoebe, or I should say, a pair of them, proved their 
presence to me daily, by their lively, eager calls; I 
fancied at first that they were going to build under 
my front porch, or the piazza on the north side of 
the house, but diligent search revealed no nest, and 
I think they made their home under some shelter 
among my nearest neighbor’s buildings. 

I do not think that it is usual for robins to nest 
in pine trees; they show a more varied choice, and 
more unaccountable selections of sites for their 
nests than any other bird with which I am familiar; 
but a pair built very early in the season, in the very 
thick branches of one of the pine trees near the 
house, and seemed to take the contract to keep my 
garden, on which the pine tree bordered, free from 
angle worms and grubs. 

A great northern shrike crossed the premises once 
early in the season, and was probably the one that 
later nested on Good Will Farm, and was reported 
to me as working havoc among the nestlings of 
other birds. Among the friends that paid me brief 


52 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


visits, deciding not to summer on my premses were 
half a dozen cedar birds; they visited the big Balm 
of Gilead tree, remaining a few moments, but ap¬ 
peared very nervous and fidgety. 

“We can’t stop but a few moments,” they said, 
“we’ve so many calls to make, and it’s late anyway.” 
But I was glad to welcome them even for a moment. 

The blue birds reared a family in a box in the 
orchard; another pair wanted to occupy the little 
house in the Balm of Gilead but a pair of English 
sparrows nesting on a neighboring farm, came over 
and said they should not stop there; in like manner 
did these pestiferous creatures treat the pair of 
wood-swallows that occupied the house last year. 

A pair of cat birds furnished a full orchestra, 
morning and afternoon; song thrushes gave evening 
concerts, while in the middle of the day, the bobo¬ 
links appeared in full dress and went into ecstasies 
of song. 

Among all the bird houses put up at Good Will 
and vicinity last spring there was not one adapted 
to the use of the flicker, or golden winged wood¬ 
pecker; this was an oversight on my part. Where 
the flicker that greeted me occasionally during the 
summer found a nesting place I cannot tell, but 
somewhere in the vicinity he carried out his summer 
program. 

The whip-poor-will did not once come near the 
house, but whip-poor-willed to his heart’s content 
in the edge of a deep wood, south of the bean field. 
The Baltimore orioles wove their pendant houses at 
Good Will, I suppose, because there are no elm trees 
at “Applehurst” large enough to suit them; for 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


53 


some reason the meadow larks, in which I especially 
delight, preferred the low lands at Good Will, and 
Willow-Wood, to anything I could offer them; the 
purple martins at Willow-Wood told me one day 
that a part of them would colonize up here, if I 
could furnish suitable accommodations—they said 
something, and if they did not say that, what dia 
they say? and I may respond to the proposal next 
spring. 

No farm is complete, no country life is perfect, 
without a few barn swallows to circle about at sun¬ 
set, and the well ventilated barn, afforded ample 
accommodations for them. 

Just how insectivorous birds survived the months 
of May and June, I cannot tell; there were no in¬ 
sects, on account of the prolonged cold wet spell, 
until about the twentieth of June. How the ground 
sparrows and other birds who nest close to mother 
earth, managed to keep their eggs warm and dry 
through the long continued rain of the week ending 
June sixteenth, remains a mystery: but in the midst 
of it all, four ground sparrows were hatched in the 
edge of the orchard and safely brought through the 
perils of early infancy. Repeated visits to the nest 
showed that Mrs. Sparrow’s maternal instincts were 
equal to any climatic emergency. But what a sad, 
sad book could be written upon the tragedies of bird 
life on any farm, in any woodland, in any summer! 

About the middle of May I had piled some brush 
to be burned and the burning must be done before 
the field could be ploughed. Not until the burning 
was well under way, did I discover a song sparrow’s 
nest with the eggs in it. This was dire misfortune 


54 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


for the sparrow, and I regretted it; but to my sur¬ 
prise the sparrows—one of them—sat on a telephone 
wire close by and poured forth a little torrent of 
song, all the while the home nest was in the confla¬ 
gration. Nero fiddled when Rome was burning; I 
understand that, but I fail to understand yet the 
attitude of this feathered songster toward the de¬ 
struction of its nest and eggs. 

Tragedy number two occurred when the same 
field was being ploughed; I was holding the plough 
and the “hired man” was driving; not having much 
knowledge of the ways of wild things, he suddenly 
exclaimed: 

“There’s a bird that’s hurt; do you want me to 
get it?” 

I assured him that the bird was not injured but 
was trying to attract our attention to her and away 
from the nest. He could not believe me at first, but 
satisfied himself that the creature had no intention 
of being caught in the little game that she was play¬ 
ing. It took about fifteen minutes to go around the 
field with the plough and when we came back to the 
place, the dear creature had to leave her nest again, 
and so it went, each round bringing the plough a 
foot nearer to her nest and its treasures, and the 
plough turning a great furrow each time—nearer 
and nearer; at the rate of four feet an hour came 
this kind of car of Juggernaut until, finally, it lifted 
the turf in which the nest was located, turned it over 
and buried it forever from the grieved mother. 

It used to be a sign when I was a boy, and it may 
be now, that if hens run to shelter when it rains, 
the down-pour will soon be over; if they continue to 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


55 


forage for food in the wet, the storm is to be long 
continued. I had not noticed until the beginning 
of a full week of rain in June, that possibly the birds 
may be watched as a sign in the same way. 

Each day during that long period of rain, they 
sang persistently and sometimes it seemed as if the 
harder it rained the louder and more persistently 
they poured forth their song. 

Sunday morning, June seventeenth, I awoke at 
three-twenty by my watch. This was standard 
time, and means that by local time—sun time—it 
was two-forty-five A.M. It was raining hard; 
robins, cat-birds, sparrows and one bobolink were 
taxing their throats to the uttermost in a wonderful 
concert. It continued for at least half an hour, 
when I fell asleep. At seven, the rain still pouring, 
the birds were running the same trills, filling the 
place with harmony, above the sound of the falling 
rain—a sound that, because it had been almost con¬ 
tinuous for a week, was beginning to be monotonous 
and oppressive. 


Cordially yours, 




LETTER X 


To Mr. M. H. L.— 

Dear Friend: 

I promised to write at the end of the season and 
tell you just how I succeeded or failed in my farming. 
But before I descend to details and talk about the 
number of bushels and pecks and pounds of produce 
coaxed from field and garden, I must tell you about 
the “Harvest Home Night” or whatever it may be 
called. 

I had an agricultural fair; had it here in the 
south room at Applehurst; held it in the evening 
only and admission was free. I could exhibit with¬ 
out charging any admission because no premiums 
were offered, I being the sole exhibitor and competi¬ 
tion impossible, and I did not even have to pay hall 
rent. The exhibit cost me a lot—there’s no mis¬ 
take about that because into the cost I must figure 
commercial fertilizer, cultivation, time, seeds and 
many other things; but the direct cost was nil. 

Advertising cost me nothing because I did not de¬ 
cide to open the exhibit to the public until I had got 
every thing together so I could see how it would 
look; and, by the time I had done that—about noon 
of the day of this special occasion—it was too late 
to get out any flaming posters, even if I had recog¬ 
nized the need or felt the desire. So instead of 
printers’ ink I just sent around word that I would 
have agriculture products on exhibition in this 

56 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


57 


house from seven to eight-thirty that very evening, 
and would like to have folks come, examine, criticize, 
congratulate and also write their names in the 
Applehurst guest book. 

I had secured some paper plates made by the 
Keyes Fibre Company of Fairfield, which makes 
practically all the paper plates that are used; a 
supply of coffee and postum, sugar and cream, and 
had borrowed mugs so I could serve coffee to the 
grown-ups and postum to the growing. 

It took Douglass McHugh, a Good Will boy, and 
me all of three hours to move things out of the 
south room and arrange the exhibits at convenient 
places. 

There were four exhibition spots in the room; 
and each had a suggestion of creature comforts—a 
kind of harvest-home atmosphere that pleased me. 
At ten minutes of seven the kerosene lamps were 
lighted; at seven o’clock the visitors arrived. No 
one had been told of the hot drink that was to be 
served—a mug of it to each visitor.—so the exhibit 
was the only thing. 

Pryor’s band, Sousa’s band, an orchestra whose 
name I have forgotten, John McCormack, the 
famous tenor, the Trinity church choir and a cele¬ 
brated ban joist—name has escaped me—were all 
assembled in the dining room, ready to respond 
when their turn came on the program, or rather, 
perhaps I should explain that Mr. W. P. Hinckley, 
Supervisor of Good Will, had a Victrola and a sup¬ 
ply of records stationed in the middle of the dining 
room—there would not have been room for all these 
musicians had they been present in person. 


58 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


The junior class of the Good Will High School 
managed the arrivals and told them what to do and 
saw that they did it, viz: turn to the left, enter the 
sitting room and place signature in the guest book, 
then cross the hallway into the south room and ex¬ 
amine the products. The preface to the “Applehurst 
Guest Book” reads thus: 

“All persons visiting this house, whether for a 
few minutes or many days, are requested to write 
their names in this book, especially if they be such 
as are fond of all out doors, and mountains—at a 
distance—and love birds and flowers and woods and 
trails and things to eat and other benefits which 
God bestows upon us.” 

The first exhibition spot in the south room was a 
large table with sixteen plates on it. Half of the 
plates were devoted to eight varieties of apples— 
apples that ranged from garnet to pale gold—gay 
Ben Davis, golden Tolman Sweets, rich R. I. Green¬ 
ings, subdued Baldwins, attractive Northern Spys— 
apples that appeared appetizing and that loaded the 
air with the bewitching odor that always prevails 
at pomological shows in New England—apples that 
looked better than they smelled even—not “apples 
of gold in pictures of silver” but apples of Apple¬ 
hurst on plates of paper. 

On the same table were four plates of beans—> 
wax-beans, string beans, Rowe’s prolific beans and 
yellow-eyed beans—the last variety being from the 
very best strain of “Yellow-eyes” in existence, the 
seed having been procured from the Maine State 
College last spring. The other four plates were de¬ 
voted to corn on the ear—one plate of Yellow Flint, 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


59 


one of Golden Bantam, one of Stowell’s Evergreen, 
and the fourth containing one ear of corn, fairly 
good to look at but exhibited to teach any youthful 
and unsophisticated spectator present the kind of 
ear not to select for seed. 

The next exhibition spot had eight plates—sam¬ 
ples of beets, turnips, three varieties of potatoes, and 
cabbage. One variety of potato was from seed sent 
from Montana last spring by Mr. E. C. McDonald. 
I did my best to make them compare favorably with 
the other varieties but the label, after announcing 
the above facts contained the additional word 
“Punk.” 

The third exhibition spot was different. One 
card on the table said: 

“It is not all of farming to raise ‘crops’; 

THERE SHOULD BE BEAUTY SPOTS ON EVERY FARM.” 

And so here were plates of canna bulbs, dahlia 
bulbs, gladioli bulbs, and the seed burs of the Vir¬ 
ginia Creeper; and on this table were a pound of 
butter and a jar of milk. 

The fourth exhibition spot was a return to crops 
and crop products. A squash and a pumpkin; big 
seed cucumbers; a plate of buck-wheat and a plate 
of buckwheat flour; a plate of 

“Fresh henery eggs quoted today in Boston 

AT NINETY-TWO CENTS PER DOZEN, OR NEARLY EIGHT 
cents each” the label said; a plate each of wheat, 
shorts, middlings, and flour; yes, there were some 
other things but I have mentioned most of them. 

And the visitors came and the bands played in 
the dining room,—sometimes Prior’s and sometimes 
Sousa’s—and the fire flared and flickered on the 


60 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


hearth, and guests wrote their names in the guest 
book, and the odor of coffee floated in from the 
kitchen and mingled with odor of Gravensteins and 
Tolman Sweets, and the people talked and laughed 
and commented on the exhibit, and I personally es¬ 
corted parties from one exhibition spot to another, 
and metaphorically speaking, “sang the praises” of 
one exhibit, explained others and apologized for 
anything that seemed to call for apologies. 

Eight-forty by the clock arrived, one hundred 
and forty-five guests had written in the “Guest 
Book,” nearly everybody had gone, and the guests 
had come in such a bunch and kept me so busy that 
no hot drink had been served because in the general 
happiness of explaining the exhibits I had failed to 
send word to the kitchen to serve coffee. By the 
way, I have a lot of coffee, etc., left over, and if you 
will come up you may fill up; I have returned the 
borrowed mugs but I could get one for you some¬ 
where; I don’t drink it myself though I know that 
many people pronounce it good. 

One thing I have failed to mention; thus far I 
have made no reference to my plan of welcoming 
the coming guests and speeding the departing, and 
this device was really the first and the last of my 
exhibit; it welcomed my friends before I could greet 
them; it expressed a final farewell sometime after I 
had said “Good Night” to one after another of those 
who had accepted my invitation. It promised in 
its early inception to be a grotesque success; in the 
end, from my standpoint, it came near being a grue¬ 
some failure because no one can afford to deride 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


61 


his guests, as they depart, no matter how mechani¬ 
cal and impersonal the derision may seem to be. 

Late in the afternoon I sacrificed my biggest and 
best pumpkin, and, for the first time in over fifty 
years I made a Jack-o’-lantern. I have often won¬ 
dered why people who make these things give them 
such commonplace features. I have never seen real 
art in the face of a Jack-o’-lantern until I had com¬ 
pleted one as the crowning feature of my exhibit 
here at Applehurst. The two perpendicular wrinkles 
which I deftly cut between the eyebrows gave Jack 
a conscientious expression seldom seen on real hu¬ 
man faces and exceedingly difficult to develop in a 
pumpkin. The curve of the mouth added character, 
and the lines around the corners gave a benevolent 
expression which most makers of Jack-o’-lanterns 
have failed to get and probably never tried to 
produce. 

In order to satisfy myself that I had achieved the 
ne plus ultra in Jack-o’-lanterns I took it in to a 
dark room early in the afternoon and placed a light¬ 
ed taper inside. I was more than pleased; the 
effect left nothing to be desired; I had achieved a 
combination of the grotesqueness of an ordinary 
Jack-o’-lantern and the benevolence of Santa Claus 
on 

—“the night before Christmas 
When all through the house, 

Not a creature was stirring” 

I submit that this had never, so far as I know, 
been done in the past. 

When I lighted the lamps in the house I placed a 
lighted taper in Jack and put him on the front 


62 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


porch. He smiled; he looked so cheerful, so benign, 
so philanthropic, and seemed to be so glowing with 
benevolence that I had just an instant of compunc¬ 
tion about leaving him out on the porch for the night 
was dark and there was a chill in the air. But it 
was some satisfaction to know that, in case I failed 
to meet each guest individually, Jack would make 
each and everyone welcome and happy. I might 
have stationed some man or woman there to speak 
words of welcome but I could never know whether 
or not such person was saying just what I wanted 
said, but Jack would say it all, and he would say, 
out of that benign expression precisely the same 
thing to each and every one; he would express the 
warmth and the glow of friendship. 

With such confidence in the efficiency of my de¬ 
vice, and Jack’s ability to do the honors of the oc¬ 
casion in a dignified way, I forgot all about him 
until most of my guests had departed. Then I hap¬ 
pened to go out on the porch having accompanied 
a friend to his carriage. I stood face to face with 
Jack. In a mild way I was horrified; horripilation 
attacked me and there was a reason for it. 

Horripilation is a good word; it is made up of 
“horror,” the meaning of which you understand, and 
“pilus” which means hair. Horripilation is the 
result of fright or shock that makes you feel as if 
your hair were standing on end; it is horror in your 
scalp, a creepy sensation all over you. This is what 
gave me horripilation, viz: There was no benign ex¬ 
pression on Jack’s face at all—no such welcoming 
smile as I had imagined. He looked like a vaga¬ 
bond—like a rum-blushed, whiskey-tinted, brandy- 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


63 


blasted vagabond, smiling a sardonic smile, grinning 
a grumpy grimace at each of my friends after I had 
received their congratulations and they were start¬ 
ing for home. I stood there for two or three min¬ 
utes and watched. As a dignified old man stepped 
down the path it seemed as though Jack had called 
out: 

“Good Night old pard; did you forget anything?” 

And Jack smiled that exasperating, insulting 
smile, the insolence of which all my guests must 
have felt. 

When a young lady congratulating me, said “Good 
Night” and tripped away, Jack seemed to call out: 

“High, there! Old woman, would you have liked 
a cup of coffee, Coffee, CoffEE?” and there was that 
grin,—the grin which I myself had carved and set 
to make the last happy impression on my neighbors 
—a grin little short of fiendish. 

I’ll ’tell you, my friend, if ever I have another 
evening agricultural exhibit at Applehurst, I shall 
say the “Good Night” myself; I will not have any 
illuminated pumpkin grinning insults to those I re¬ 
spect and love as they leave this hospitable old 
house. 

I was going to tell you just how I came out with 
the season’s operations on the farm, but I have 
neither space nor time left. 

Cordially yours, 



LETTER XI 


To Mr. M. H. L.— 

Dear Friend: 

In my last letter I intended to report on my farm¬ 
ing operations in this year 1919, but I devoted so 
much time to my “Harvest Home Night” or “Agri¬ 
cultural Fair” or whichever it shall be called that I 
failed to give you any idea of the value of the pro¬ 
ducts. But I have leisure now and you shall have a 
full and concise account of the produce, both as to 
quantity and monetary value, and then you may 
judge for yourself whether I can afford to continue 
this arrangement any longer. 

First, there is the grain. My chief grain crop was 
wheat of which I had sixty-eight bushels. The fixed 
price of weat is $2.26 per bushel, which makes mine 
represent $153.68; but I preferred to have mine con¬ 
verted into flour and feed. I have sent half of the 
wheat to the mill and have received it back in the 
form of flour, bran and middlings. There were six 
barrels of flour which I have sold at $11.00 a barrel 
a total of $66.00. This means that my flour, when 1 
send the rest of the wheat to the mill, will amount to 
another six barrels, or twelve barrels in all, sold at 
$132.00. The bran and middlings make up the 
difference between the value of the whole wheat at 
$2.26 per bushel and the milled product. 

Next in order comes my potato field. I had one 
hundred and— 


64 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


65 


I was interrupted here, my friend, by a knock at 
the door. I answered the knock and met a boy, who 
I should think is about thirteen years old. 

“Come in and sit down” I said. 

He came in and sat. 

I know this boy well, but I had never seen him to 
such good advantage as just here and now. He sat 
on the old sofa directly in front of the fireplace. 
The sun was already low in the west and the light 
in the room was dim. I had just aroused the flames 
by adding some fresh birch to the load the andirons 
were carrying, and the yellow light surrounded him 
with a golden atmosphere. 

After a few words of greeting and remarks about 
the weather, the boy suddenly lapsed into silence. 
He gazed steadfastly at the yellow flames; his face 
reflected the golden light and he seemed to be half 
glorified. I wondered how the growing silence 
would be broken—the silence which, if continued 
much longer, would become oppressive; I waited un¬ 
til the lad himself, evidently struggling to break 
from the spell of the open fire said: 

“Caught many fish lately?” 

This unexpected reference to the sport of which 
youth has ever dreamed and of which old age has 
never tired, brought me back from a hazy contem¬ 
plation of the picture before me—the russet brown 
of the upholstery of the sofa’s high back, a rich set¬ 
ting indeed for the lad’s illumined form, his finely 
chiseled features,—features that somehow had re¬ 
minded me just then of faces I had seen of angels cut 
in marble—brought me back, I say, to the tangible 



66 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


things of life and I realized that I was a host, a guest 
was present and I must speak. 

“Not many” I replied, because I must say some¬ 
thing and to say “No” would be too short and per¬ 
haps indicate to my unbidden but very welcome 
guest that I was in ill-humor and not wishing to talk 
with him. 

There was a long pause, while he continued to gaze 
at the fire. How delightful it was after all, I 
thought that, even though I had come up here to 
write, this boy felt that he was at liberty to come up 
here and talk—just talk as friend with friend. 
After a time the silence was broken again and again 
it was the lad who led: 

“Any big ones?” 

“Not—well, not so very large” I replied. “You 
know, perhaps, that I haven’t been fishing much 
lately. Pve been busy; yes, Fve been very busy, and 
every day has been full; each day has brought its 
du—” 

“Any trout?” queried my visitor. 

“No, not any trout—oh, yes, I did: yes: Fve been 
trout fishing since I saw you and I caught a few. 
Two friends of mine came from Massachusetts and 
asked me to— 

“Any pickerel?” persisted the lad. 

The pauses had been long; neither of us seemed to 
care whether or not the conversation lagged, and yet 
each of us seemed to feel that remarks at intervals 
were essential to the occasion. The yellow light had 
faded, the gloom of dusk had gathered in the corners 
of the room, the coals were now sending forth a red 
glow that made the lad’s features stand out like a 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


67 


clean cut cameo—a pink profile against a gray 
gloom. Suddenly he turned to me and spoke again: 

“Do you know that I love you?” he asked. “Any¬ 
way I do.” 

“Well, that’s strange” I replied, as though I were 
specially amused by his declaration, “that’s strange. 
Pm not handsome, Pm not rich; Pm not specially in¬ 
teresting, Pm not—well, why do you love me?” 

“Well” said the lad, turning his head to one side 
like one in deep contemplation of some very obstruse 
problems and speaking slowly, “Well, there is more 
reason than one. In the first place you have told so 
many boys what they ought to do and what they 
ought not to do.” 

“What?” 

“Yes, sir; you’ve told so many boys what they 
ought to do and what they ought not to do.” 

Oh, my friend, were you ever visited by an angel 
—a real angel ? Did you ever go into a vacant house 
and light a fire in the chimney place, and begin to 
write a letter to some far away friend, and have an 
angel knock at the door and come in at your bidding 
and sit down near you in front of the blazing wood? 
Did you watch the angel’s face as it glowed in chang¬ 
ing light, and did he—the angel—tell you that he 
loved you because you had told people—specially 
young people—what they ought to do and what they 
ought not to do? Then you know what was in my 
heart, as I reached out and grasped the lad’s warm 
hand in mine, and looked through the mist suddenly 
gathered in my eyes, straight into his eyes, but I 
could not speak. I told you that a boy knocked at 
my door and came in and sat down near me; this 


68 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


same boy lives at Good Will—a real boy—and I be¬ 
lieve his pet name is “Shanghai” or something like 
that; but I declare unto you now that Pve been vis¬ 
ited by an angel, right here by my fireside. He came 
while I was writing to you about wheat, potatoes 
and dollars and cents. 

Hanged be wheat-raising, and hanged be potatoes 
and cabbages, shorthorn carrots, yellow-eyed beans, 
and turnips; and hanged be dollars and cents! Pve 
had a visitor and now I have a vision; nothing short 
of an angel would say to a man what that boy said to 
me. They may call him a school boy, they may call 
him by the name his mother gave him, or they may 
call him Shanghai; but he has wisdom beyond his 
years, beyond mortals, beyond this world, and it 
came from above. 

Men do not love people who tell them what to do 
and what not to do. Jeremiah told the people what 
to do and what not to do. See what happened. 

Ezekiel the prophet did it and see what came of it. 

Jesus of Nazareth did it and they crucified him. 

Paul did it and they beheaded him. 

If I ever tell you how I came out with my farming 
it will be in another letter. The lad has departed; 
the fire has gone out—the angel has left his mes¬ 
sage ; I must close. 

Cordially yours, 



LETTER XII 


My dear Mr. M.:— 

It is now nearly a year since I wrote you the first 
letter from Applehurst; you will recall that it was 
late in April, when I decided to join the great army 
that had been called to fight against a food short¬ 
age. Those were great days back there, a year -ago, 
nearly, when I began to devote all my time to the 
farm—that is, to farming and cooking for myself 
and my hired man. I like to think of those days, 
and I like to talk about those days—about the horses 
and the hens, the fields, the potato planting, the 
bean planting, the orcharding and all that; I like to 
talk so long as no one asks me about the financial 
outcome. To be frank with you, the finances of the 
adventure are a sore spot with me. In June, the 
flood came, and although Applehurst is on a hill, 
about three acres of my potatoes were under water 
for a full week; a similar fate overtook about two 
acres of my beans. The fertilizer had cost money, 
and the seed beans had cost money—the beans were 
twelve dollars per bushel, and I planted four bushels 
of them—and the expense of labor, the cultivating, 
the spraying and the harvesting all cost money. 
These things furnished a big hole into which to drop 
money, and when the money was once dropped in, it 
seemed to disappear; I never saw it again, the hole 
was so deep. 

The difference between what I spent and what I 

69 


70 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


received, would have sent me across the continent for 
a six weeks’ vacation, and back; in times of peace it 
would have taken me across the Atlantic twice, and 
afforded me a month on the continent. But on such 
a trip I would have been a consumer—not a pro¬ 
ducer; the Government had said: “produce” and so 
I went at it. And I provided more vegetables than 
my family consumed; so I was on the producer’s 
side. 

You ask about my potatoes? Now what is the 
use of asking such questions; I am not obliged to 
answer, and I feel non-communicative. 

You ask about my beans? What makes you so in¬ 
quisitive? I am not asking how much you made or 
lost in your business between April and November, 
and I am as non-communicative about beans, as I 
am about potatoes. 

My orchard was a joy to me. From the time I 
gave it the dormant spray, through the blossom time, 
through the gradual maturing of the fruit, and 
through the coloring period when some of the trees 
became almost as red with fruit as they had been 
pink with blossoms last spring, until the apples 
were in the cellar, the trees were of interest. 

Some of the trees were threatened late in the 
season with boy-too-the-tis (accent on second syla- 
ble) but the trouble did not become acute. I won¬ 
der if you noticed any inroad of it when you had an 
orchard. I can see how in some localities it might 
be dffiicult to handle. Boytoothetis is particularly 
aggravating because it does not show itself until 
the fruit is almost ripe, but not ripe enough for use. 
I find that orchard books do not say anything about 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


71 


boytoothetis, but its presence in an orchard is easily 
detected. You find near the trees—usually the 
trees that have the most attractive fruit on them— 
apples lying on the ground which look at the first 
glance, as though a man had bitten into them, and 
finding them hard or too sour, had tossed them aside 
looking for better fruit; but if the wound is care¬ 
fully examined, it shows that it was made with 
smaller teeth than a man’s. 

I have been told that boytoothetis seldom attacks 
an orchard if the owner keeps a buli-dog, and I have 
heard that a shot-gun loaded with beans and fired 
into the middle of the orchad at intervals, is a 
preventive ; but I did not try any of those things. 
I had plenty of apples. 

And now it is almost time to begin again; in fact 
I have already begun. I have a better equipment 
for farming than I had a year ago; I have a good 
supply of seed—beans, potatoes, corn, oats, wheat, 
barley; I have a good supply of fertilizer—that is, 
it was ordered three months ago, and has not come; 
in place of the two forlorn biddies that were pur¬ 
chased on the spur of the moment and together 
hatched out eleven chicks, everyone of which reached 
maturity—instead of two forlorn biddies, I have 
two flocks of hens—a dozen in each flock; twelve 
full-blooded Rhode Island Reds, and the same num¬ 
ber of Plymouth Rocks. 

It’s interesting, intensely interesting, and in my 
judgment, it is a gamble. 

But I am not going to surrender; here goes for 
another season of planting, hoeing, spraying, cul¬ 
tivating, haying. I win or I lose. If I win, success 


72 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


will feed my ambition to make this hill-top an in¬ 
teresting place in years to come; if I lose, well, if I 
lose I shall throw up both hands on the first day of 
December, and join the great army of consumers 
again. You are not likely to hear from now, until 
after planting. 


Yours as ever, 



LETTER XIII 


My dear Mr. L.:— 

I did not intend to write you at this time, but I 
must tell you a melancholy episode entirely different 
from anything within the realm of my experience 
until this afternoon. 

I have said “melancholy” but this may not be the 
adjective which best describes the event which I am 
about to relate, if I had a better command of our 
language. I think some of my acquaintances would 
say it was an “awful” experience, and yet it did not 
fill me with “awe,” as a thunder storm or an earth¬ 
quake would—not exactly. I have thought of the 
word “terrible” and yet that adjective, like the one 
which immediately preceeds it, seems to me to have 
been overworked, and I hesitate to make use of it. 
You will know of some word, I doubt not that will 
exactly meet the requirements. 

To make a short story long, I am in this house all 
alone today; the family of my immediate kin—my 
daughter, her children, and their father—have just 
gone to New York, and someone moves in here next 
week; the floor of the kitchen is being painted today. 
I came up here to write, but as I have said, not to 
you, for I owe a friend a letter, and was determined 
to mail him a missive tomorrow morning. 

It has been raining steadily, as you know, for the 
last three days, and the first thing, as I came into 
the northwest room so gray and silent and damp, 

73 


74 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


was to light a fire on the hearth. I spent a little 
time watching the tiny flames and the curling smoke, 
as the blaze made its way among the birch sticks, 
and then I began to write. I had not expressed a 
single idea on paper when I thought, at first, my 
eyes were blurred; but I soon satisfied myself that 
I got this impression from a half-grown mouse—a 
Mus domestica —which, as soon as I moved disap¬ 
peared into a small hole in the floor close to the 
hearthstone. 

I proceeded to write, endeavoring to adequately 
express my first thought, when, behold, another 
mouse came out of the same hole, and moved noise¬ 
lessly toward the fire. One might suspect that it 
was the same mouse, but I knew it was not, because 
this second one had a small white spot a little higher 
than the eyes, between the ears—a spot shaped like 
an inverted “V” filled in solid. 

Later I learned that there were six of these half- 
grown creatures— Mus —in the house, and using this 
particular hole. 

My first thoughts were of lenity; I sat and studied 
this tiny creature with interest, and tried to recall 
whether I had ever read of mice with an inverted 
“V” shaped white spot on the forehead; what if I 
had discovered a new specie! I then remembered 
that the family which had just moved out of this 
house had been annoyed more or less by these quiet 
creatures, and while they could not possibly annoy 
me, I would, out of consideration for others, see if I 
could reduce their number. 

I say they “cannot annoy me,” and this may sur¬ 
prise you, but you must remember that I am a lover 



LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


75 


of wild life, and while these little rodents are not 
exactly domesticated—they do not answer when 
their name is called—they may be regarded as wild, 
and are therefore included in the category of “wild 
and interesting,” although living in the house. 

I moved. One of the mice had left the hole and 
was creeping along near the mop-board, when, with 
a dexterous movement with the remains of a croquet- 
mallet handle, I crushed the little creature. I could 
not help feeling that it was un unequal conflict as to 
size; I weigh two-hundred and twelve pounds, while 
for a guess, this half-grown mouse weighed three- 
fourths of an ounce. It was avoirdupois versus 
agility, and avoirdupois won. I threw him into the 
fireplace and he was cremated at once. 

I will not take time to tell you the details of the 
next two captures, but in less than half an hour, 
three of these cute little visitors had been cremated 
—one of them just plain mouse-color and the other 
two with the inverted “V” shaped, white spot. 

Finally a mouse came out of the hole and moved 
slowly about the hearth, then struck across the floor 
toward the waste-basket, under the table near my 
feet. I said to myself: 

“Isn’t it queer? If I were a woman I’d be half 
crazed; I’d probably scream and jump into a chair, 
and frighten the little tooley-wooley back into the 
hole, and there is no telling what would happen next. 
It’s queer how women always think a mouse wants 
to get into their clothing. Here I am—a man, and 
have no more fear of a mouse, and no more sus¬ 
picions of any evil intentions, than I have of a chip 
of birch wood—not a bit.” 


76 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


And I went on with my writing. I had got to 
where, in my letter, I was asking my friend if he 
could tell me how to make one hundred bushels of 
potatoes at one dollar a bushel pay for one-hundred 
and thirty-five dollars worth of commercial fer¬ 
tilizer when I felt the funniest little tickle, down 
below my knee, that I ever felt in my life. It was 
just as though somebody were trying to annoy me 
with a feather picked off the head of a ruby- 
throated humming bird, or, as I try to analyze my 
sensations now, it was as though a tiny tadpole 
were trailing his tail over me—a cool, tantalizing, 
shivery tickle, most uncanny and weird in its effect. 

I really cannot describe that tickle—it was so 
different from anything else in this world. 

And then, quicker than I can write it, yes, quicker 
than I could tell it if you were here, that tooley- 
woolley tickling thing moved up—right up to my 
knee, and it was inside my underclothing. I didn’t 
jump into a chair and scream—not by any means; 
I am not a woman, and only a woman or a girl would 
do that. But I confess that I—well what would you 
do, if you knew that a pearl-gray mouse, with an 
inverted “V” shaped white spot on its forehead—in 
all probability a new specie—was traveling between 
you and your underwear, and was already above 
your knee? What would you do? 

Well, I’ll tell you what I did. I conducted myself 
like a man—a man in love with nature and es¬ 
pecially wild things—a man bent on learning 
whether or not a new specie of Mus domestica had 
appeared on his premises. I jumped up, so as to 




LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


77 


make what I said more emphatic—more command¬ 
ing, as it were—and I shouted: 

“Go back, you pesky critter; go back!” 

If I had been a profane man, I think I would 
have used swear words, but I never do that; yet I 
had got to say something, and so I spoke again— 
this time louder: 

“Dunder und blitzen; Hie fabula docet; Koosh! 
Go back.” 

But I was not at all sure he would understand. I 
had spoken imperatively in four languages. “Dun¬ 
der und blitzen” I guess is Dutch for thunder and 
lightening;” “hie fabula docet,” means “this fable 
teaches;” but it is all I remember now of Latin, and 
I thought it would get by, specially if the Mus 
domestica proved to be of Italian origin; and Koosh 
is the French name of a Belgian dog up at Willow- 
Wood, and her name is all I know of French. 

But I did not trust to commands, even in four 
languages. While I was letting out the most appro¬ 
priate expressions at my command I clapped my 
right hand over the spot where Mus was—he had 
got just above the knee, and then, with my left 
thumb and fore finger, I clamped the pesky fellow’s 
head. And I held on to him, too. It made me 
shiver, and it seemed just as though there was a 
mouse crawling up each leg, between the underwear 
and my flesh, and another crawling up my back, 
and each with a “V” shaped white spot in his 
forehead. 

Ralph Cain was painting the kitchen floor. He 
came into the room, and I told him about it. 


78 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


“Is that so?” said Ralph, “Where is the mouse 
now ?” 

“Where is the mouse now?” I repeated. “Here 
he is, up my pantaloon’s leg, between me and my 
under-clothing. Pve —Hie — had hold— fabula —of 
him for the last — docet —five minutes; I don’t dare 
let go of him; I’m afraid he isn’t dead yet—Koosh! 

I held on to Mus domestica a few minutes longer, 
pinching his head harder and harder between my 
thumb and finger while Ralph Cain stood with a 
paint brush in his hand and a smile on his face, and 
watched me. I could not see what there was to 
smile at but Ralph is easily amused; he probably 
thought it was funny but some people have mighty 
queer notions of fun. At length I let up on little 
Mus: I parted my thumb and finger and the fur- 
covered little corpse fell to the floor. I took melan¬ 
choly satisfaction a moment later in tossing it into 
the fireplace. 

I stopped writing the other letter just to tell you 
about this event, it is so unlike my life’s experiences. 
I am sorry now I acted so hastily. Had I been more 
deliberate, I might have understood better just what 
happened. I do not know whether it was the nose 
of mus domestica, or his precious little feet, or the 
tip of his tail, which gave me that sensation, and I 
shall never know, because I am not going to try the 
experiment over again; no, I could not be persuaded 
to do it. I don’t care, anyway. Seems as I write, 
just as if I ought to have my feet up in a chair, be¬ 
cause the remnant of the brood of sneaking, brazen, 
squeaking, peaked-nose, creepy-footed, tickling¬ 
tailed vermin would run up me again. But I did 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


79 


not scream—no, I am too manly to get excited over 
a harmless little mouse. I confess that I am a bit 
apprehensive lest, when the family moves in, some 
nervous woman will see one of these little “darlints” 
and get excited and possibly shriek. 

Having relieved my pent-up feelings by relating 
this episode, melancholy or whatever you see fit to 
call it, I shall now complete the letter I came here 
to write. But in it I shall say nothing about the 
mice up here at Applehurst; you alone have been 
made familiar with the creepy details of today’s 
experiences. 

Cordially yours, 


P. S. I have been thinking, since I wrote the 
above, and have about concluded that, unless I can 
eradicate this family of mus, I shall sell Applehurst 
and begin all over again on some other farm. I am 
sitting down as I write this but both my feet are 
up in a chair. It is a cramped and rather uncom¬ 
fortable position but I am convinced it is the best 
way to sit in this room—till I get a cat or something, 
or sell and move away. 



LETTER XIV 


My Dear Friend L—: 

It is a long time since you have heard from me; 
and I am writing you in a kind of patriarchal spirit. 
I do not imagine that it ever occurred to you that I 
am any thing like the Old Testament patriarchs, say 
Abraham, Jesse and Job; and yet, in one respect I 
find myself similar to them. One never cuts quite 
clear of the conceptions of his boyhood, and away 
back somewhere in those early days, I got a mental 
picture of the Old Testament characters. I have al¬ 
ways thought of Abraham, as being tall, slender, 
and wearing a long beard, although there must have 
been a time in his life when he was beardless. On 
the other hand, I have never been able to think of 
Job, as anything else than short, sallow, clean¬ 
shaven and fat. And I admit that, physically, I 
cannot bear much resemblance to either one of them; 
I am neither tall, slender, and bearded, nor am I 
short, fat and sallow. My resemblance to the men 
in the far past is summed up in one word, and the 
word is “sheep.” 

Abraham owned much cattle and many sheep; I 
do not know just how many Jesse had, but his son 
David tended them, and there were enough of them 
to occupy his time; but the ancient records say that 
Job had seven thousand of these wool-laden quad¬ 
rupeds. 

It seems an enormous flock compared with my 

80 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


81 


own, but I am informing you that I am the happy 
possessor of a flock of eleven sheep; which means 
that I am six thousand, nine hundred and eighty*- 
nine sheep short of Job’s possession in the time of 
his greatest prosperity. But now that I am really 
in the sheep business, I take some satisfaction in the 
fact that sheep raising is such an ancient and honor¬ 
able calling. 

Just stop and think what it means when you are 
fussing over one little lamb, to know that David, the 
Psalmist of Israel, devoted his hours and days to 
the same occupation. 

My first real experience in sheep-raising,—not in 
sheep owning but in sheep-raising—came on the 
sixth day of last February. Unless you have vivid 
recollections of that date—February sixth—do not 
try to recall it. On account of atmospherical condi¬ 
tions, it is better that it be forgotten as soon as 
possible. 

It was on that date that the thermometer here in 
Somerset County, Maine, was down, down, ’way 
down; the wind was blowing out of the northwest, 
and the air was full of dry, sand-like snow. It was 
too cold for a night at Applehurst, and I was deter¬ 
mined to make my way from my office to my own 
home, Willow-Wood. I would not have ridden that 
distance for ten dollars; it was too cold to ride, and 
so I insisted upon walking, and I have put it down 
as the most strenuous thing that I ever did—that 
walk of less than two miles into that northwest 
breeze. 

I had been in the house but a few minutes, when 
my good wife said to me: 


82 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


“When you get thawed out you will find a little 
lamb in a basket over back of the stove; it was born 
this afternoon.” 

Everett had brought the little creature over from 
the barn, in a chilled condition. I lifted the woolen 
blanket, and found there a wee lamb stretched out on 
the bottom, and to all appearances, dead. I laid my 
hand on the thin, white wool, and it was cold—as 
cold as though the little fellow had just been taken 
from ice-water. 

“He’s dead,” I said promptly. 

“I don’t think he’s quite dead, is he?” said Everett 
appealingly. 

“If he isn’t dead now, he never will be,” I said 
promptly and decisively. 

“Didn’t his nostril move just a little then?” asked 
the boy; but I had not seen any motion. I put my 
hand under the lamb’s head, and lifted it a few 
inches, and then withdrew my hand; the head fell 
back, and there was every indication, that the last 
spark of life was gone. 

Everett placed his forefinger on the lamb’s eyelid, 
but the lid quickly dropped back again. Dead! 

But on the shelf, under the clock, there was a copy 
of Randall’s Sheep Book; now do not get Randall 
and Kendall mixed. W. B. Kendall of Bowdoinham, 
Maine, is the “Sheep King of New England,” with a 
flock of sheep one-half as big as Job’s, of the olden 
time. But Henry S. Randall is the author of a book 
on sheep—a book that was published in 1864, and 
looks old fashioned and almost antiquated; but in 
that book I had read this: 

“When a lamb is found chilled in cold weather, 



LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


83 


i. e., unable to move or swallow, and perhaps with its 
jaws set, no time is to be lost. It cannot be restored 
by mere friction; and if only wrapped in a blanket 
and put in a warm room, it will die. It should at 
once be placed in a heated oven, or in a bath of water 
about as hot as can be comfortably borne by the 
hand. * * * * ” 

So I said to Everett: 

“Get a tub quick.” 

And Everett rushed down to the basement and 
brought up a tub. 

“Fill it half full of water,” I said, “water not hot 
enough to scald but considerably more than blood 
warm.” 

And instructions were promptly obeyed. 

Then I took the cold, apparently lifeless thing out 
of the basket, and put it into the tub, and moved him 
about, just keeping his head above the water. 

“What tomfoolery is this,” I said in my heart; 
“swashing a dead lamb around in a tub of water!” 

After four or five minutes, I lifted him out, and 
began to rub him vigorously with hot woolen cloths; 
then I worked his forelegs back and forth, and 
treated his hind legs in the same fashion; then I gave 
him some more rubbing. 

Randall says in his book: 

“It is astonishing from how near a point to death, 
lambs can be restored. It often appears literally 
like a re-animation of the dead.” 

So I opened the oven door, and letting the lamb 
rest on the palms of my hand, just the way the nurse 
holds the new born babe that she wants you to take 
for a minute, I put him into the oven, and held him 


84 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


there, until the wool was warm—almost hot—to the 
touch; then I turned him the other side up for a 
similar semi-baking. 

I had been indulging in this apparent foolishness, 
thanking my stars that my neighbors could not look 
into the windows, and that no one but my good wife 
and Everett would ever know anything about it, 
when the lamb parted his lips and bleated—just one 
feeble cry; it was a good sign; it was more than a 
moving of the nostrils and shortly after that he 
winked. It was fifteen minutes later, when I dis¬ 
covered a movement which indicated that he was 
breathing, but his breaths were very short and 
quickly drawn. 

It was six-thirty when I began to work on him, 
and at about seven-thirty, I said: 

“Now that he is reviving, I will wash up for 
supper.” 

At eight-thirty, my lamb which represented my 
first effort at sheep raising, and which brings my 
flock up to within six thousand, nine hundred and 
eighty-eight of Job’s greatest prosperity, was able to 
stand on his feet, and no longer willing to be con¬ 
fined to a basket. 

Then my neighbor, Wagner, came over and told 
me that unless the mother was brought over and 
put in the basement, where she could see the lamb, 
or if I deferred getting the two together until morn¬ 
ing, the mother would probably not own her off¬ 
spring. 

Everett had alread made a hurried trip to the 
nearest store and bought a rubber nipple, and the 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


85 


lamb had several little lunches of hot milk and black 
pepper. 

So my neighbor and Everett went to the barn, and 
brought over the mother; we turned the electrics on, 
in the basement, and carried her down and placed 
her in the coal-bin. The bin had been constructed 
several years ago for coal, but in the winter of 1918, 
there was nothing to prevent my coal-bin from be¬ 
ing used for a sheep-pen. 

But after they got her down into the coal-bin, and 
I went to see her, I nearly had a fit. I never saw 
such a reproachful look on any living thing in my 
life. That dear old mother sheep was over in the 
darkest corner of the black, empty coal-bin, facing 
the electric light which hung over head, and with an 
air of injured dignity, she seemed to say: 

“What in the world are you thinking of? I am a 
mother; I am entitled to some kind of decent treat¬ 
ment, and here I am in a coal-bin in a cellar!” 

That was about nine o’clock; at nine-thirty, my 
new acquisition was drawing a hearty meal from his 
mother’s supply. At eleven o’clock, when I went 
down for a good-night look at my increasing flock, I 
was satisfied that all was well. 

Mr. Wagner and Everett said however, that it 
would be necessary to bring over some hay and 
straw from the barn, to make a bed for the mother 
and the lamb, and this they did. Of course it was 
necessary to take the hay and straw through the 
kitchen and down the cellar stairs. It was shortly 
after this had been done that I laughingly said to 
my wife: 


86 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


“This is fun; I would not mind if I had half a 
dozen lambs born in this way.” 

And the good woman, lover of home and defender 
of immaculate housekeeping, glanced at the scattered 
straw, chaff and hayseed which indicated the pas¬ 
sageway from the back door to the foot of the cellar 
stairs, and exclaimed: 

“Oh my land!” 

This would seem to indicate that the lady of the 
house would prefer that the bin be filled with coal, 
and the sheep-pen be located somewhere in the barn; 
but nevertheless I am satisfied that sheep raising is 
a time-honored and dignified occupation. 

Cordially yours, 



LETTER XV 


My Dear Friend L—: 

I hardly know how to head this letter; it’s a ques¬ 
tion whether to locate myself at Applehurst or 
Clover-Slope. 

I do not think I have given you the history of this 
agricultural, patriotic adventure. Several years 
ago, this place—Applehurst it is now called—was 
for sale. I used to think the location was pleasant 
but the buildings were—well, I will inclose a couple 
of photographs, so you can see just what they ivere. 
I had often wondered why the place looked so for¬ 
lorn, and I had conferred with others about it. One 
of my neighbors told me that in his opinion, it was 
because the driveway was on the north side of the 
house; he said he never saw a place with a north 
drive-way that looked cheerful and attractive. But 
I cannot accept that as a full explanation, because 
the place has lost some of its apparent gloom, and 
the drive-way remains where it was before I pur¬ 
chased the place. 

A man had bought the place one November day 
and had moved in; he lived there alone from Novem¬ 
ber to March, occupied the front rooms, kept a flock 
of hens in what had been the kitchen for the previ¬ 
ous occupant. He told me the day I purchased that 
he had never seen the farm; he came in November 
when there was snow on the ground, and he was sell¬ 
ing in March, while there was still a good body of 

87 



88 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


snow over it. He wanted two hundred dollars more 
than he paid for it, and declared that it was worth 
two hundred dollars to live there five months in win¬ 
ter and saw his own wood. He was probably right, 
but he could not convince me that I was under any 
obligations to pay him ten dollars a week for staying 
there; so I paid him exactly what he had paid, or 
rather, I gave him my note for the entire amount. 
I believe I had money enough at the time to pay for 
having the deed recorded, and that was about all. I 
used to open up the old house occasionally for a 
party of Good Will boys, and these occasions were 
sometimes mentioned in the Record . 

One day a woman in Massachusetts wrote me 
that, if Applehurst—I had so named it because I had 
never heard of such a name before and because there 
were apple trees here—if Applehurst was not paid 
for, she would like to furnish the money. It was a 
surprise; the more I think about it, the more surpris¬ 
ing it seems to me. And it has become more or less 
of a mystery also. She wrote that her husband, be¬ 
fore he died, asked that she do something substan¬ 
tial for the founder of Good Will, and she wished to 
do it. But I did not know her husband, had never 
met him, and had never heard of anybody bearing 
that family name. I thought that sometime I would 
ask her for the family history, but she has been dead 
for several years, and I only know that I have two 
letters, in each of which she states that, during my 
life time she wished me to either occupy or use the 
place in some way, or let some of my family use it; 
at the end of my natural life, I may dispose of it as 
I choose. I wish now that I knew more about her. 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


89 


and something about her husband—the man whose 
unusual family name she bore; but all I know is that, 
after his death, knowledge of his friendly regard 
for me burst upon my vision and disappeared, much 
as a meteor sometimes flashes before us, sheds a 
glow on our path, and vanishes ; we know nothing of 
the meteor—from whence it came, or wither it 
went; we only recall from time to time that we saw 
it and cannot forget. 

The time came when I could do something to the 
buildings and I did it. Buildings, if left to them¬ 
selves, run down; not unless made to do so, do they 
ever run up. The buildings at Applehurst had been 
on the down grade for a good many years; I at¬ 
tempted to improve them, and that’s when Apple¬ 
hurst got into my heart; the more we do for anybody 
or anything, the greater our affection. I did just 
enough to that old house to come to love it. 

Last summer I found that Applehurst was not 
big enough for real farming—not enough land for 
pasture, etc. I had a neighbor whose land joined 
mine on the north, and sloped away toward Good 
Will. 

He had rented Applehurst—the land—for a few 
years because his farm was too small; he rented it 
until war was declared, and I wanted to join tne 
army of producers. Last fall he wanted to sell so 
he could go south—as far as Virginia, at least—to a 
warmer climate. Just then I received a legacy from 
the estate of an honored and loved friend; I bought 
my neighbor’s farm, and called it Clover-Slope—it 
slopes to the north, and there is a clover field on it. 
The man bought a farm twelve or fifteen miles fur- 


90 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


ther north and probably finds it as comfortable there 
as he would have found it in Virginia. 

What do you say; did I blunder? Perhaps I did; 
I might have invested that legacy in Liberty bonds, 
but it isn't any great effort to clip coupons twice a 
year; I had a feeling I would like to be doing some¬ 
thing, and the joining of Applehurst and Clover- 
Slope offers the opportunity. I may change the 
names; that is, I may drop “Applehurst" and 
“Clover-Slope," and invent some name that will 
cover both places. 

When I think of the four-dollar-a-bushel potatoes 
that I put into the ground up here last spring and 
never saw again; when I think of the tons of com¬ 
mercial fertilizer at fancy, yes, almost fabulous 
prices that I covered up in the moist soil; when I 
think of the seed beans, at twelve dollars a bushel, 
that I buried and that never came up, I am half con¬ 
vinced that I might appropriately call this hill: “The 
Place of Buried Treasure." It is a rather long name, 
I admit, but not much longer than “Manchester-by- 
the-sea." It might suggest to some impressible ad¬ 
venturer, that Captain Kidd’s ill-gotten gains were 
somewhere under my fields, and result in nocturnal 
diggings for silver and gold. You might think of 
me as erratic, if my next letter to you from this hill¬ 
top should be dated “The Place of Buried Treasure, 
April 20th, 1918," so I have almost decided that I 
will hold to the original nomenclature “Applehurst" 
and “Clover-Slope," until after another harvest; 
then I can either continue the names as they are, or 
I can shorten “The Place of Buried Treasure" to 
Treasure Hill" and then no one but my confidential 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


91 


friends will know whether the treasure in 1918 was 
buried or dug up; in other words, I will know and I 
will let you know next fall, whether I get back the 
money I am spending in an effort to do my “bit” in 
the task of producing food for a hungry world. 

Cordially yours, 



LETTER XVI 


My Dear Friend L—: 

Do you recall that some months ago I wrote you a 
letter from the hill-top? It was a letter in which I 
was telling you about the number of bushels of oats, 
wheat, potatoes, beans and other products that had 
been harvested on these homely acres in the autumn 
of 1919. In the midst of the report I was inter¬ 
rupted by a caller; a thirteen year old boy who had 
come to Applehurst to see me—a boy from Good 
Will. The boy—“Shanghai” I called him—suddenly 
and without warning told me that he loved me, and, 
upon urgent request from me he explained why I 
had so big a place in his heart. Do you remember 
that I exclaimed in my letter to you after he had 
gone: 

“Hanged be wheat-raising, and hanged be pota¬ 
toes and cabbages, short horn carrots, yellow-eyed 
beans and turnips; and hanged be dollars and 
cents!” 

Well I have something more to tell you; it is a 
kind of sequel to that very simple but truthful 
incident. 

I published that letter in the Good Will Record as 
a “Letter from Applehurst” just as this is likely to 
be published. 

Now there was living at that time in this state a 
lawyer; he was a man of fine instincts, always recog¬ 
nizing the best and standing for it—a gentleman. 

92 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


93 


He was a successful lawyer, for he had become the 
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Once, at least, 
each year he wrote me a brief note and inclosed a 
check for the Good Will Homes and Schools, but I 
did not know that he ever looked into the pages of 
the Good Will Record. A few days after the issue 
containing my letter to you was mailed I received a 
note from the Chief Justice, and it read thus: 

“Your letter from Applehurst in the Good Will 
Record received today is one of the most touching 
I ever read. Here is a little present for Shanghai— 
the boy with a grateful heart.” 

It was a fine thing to do and I wrote expressing 
my appreciation, and, having done that, I sent for 
Shanghai one day and asked him to come to the open 
fire on the hearth-stone at Applehurst. He respond¬ 
ed promptly to the friendly summons, as I felt quite 
sure he would, and we were sitting again before the 
blazing birch. 

“Suppose,” I said to him, “suppose you should 
have five dollars come to you to spend just as you 
chose; suppose it should come to you just as though 
it dropped right out of the sky—what would you do 
with it?” 

I had not told him what had happened or even 
hinted at it; but the boy seemed to recognize the 
seriousness of the question and became very 
thoughtful. There was a long pause. I waited 
patiently because I knew Shanghai, and I felt mor¬ 
ally certain that the outcome of it all,—whatever he 
might say at first—would be a rod and reel. Shang¬ 
hai is a born angler and the boys say that fish will 


94 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


find his hook when they will pay no attention to any 
other lure. 

“I don’t hardly know,” he said at last. “I know 
one thing; I wouldn’t get clothing with it, because 
Pm well clothed for the rest of the year. You see I 
have this sweater and leggins and moccasins and 
everything for comfort.” 

With as much as that settled, I knew where we 
would come out in the end, and very soon Shanghai 
was explaining that he had a fish rod, but it “wasn’t 
much of a one,” and he had a reel but there was 
something the matter with it, and he never knew 
which way it was going to work whenever he had a 
strike. And so, after still further consideration, it 
was decided that there was nothing more desirable 
than a good fishing outfit. 

Then I told him that I had a check for five dollars 
—a gift to him—and I would hand him the money 
the next morning, and he could select his rod and 
reel. Shanghai was delighted for a moment and 
then he became serious again. His mobile features 
told me that something had not been adjusted as it 
should be. 

“I wonder,” he said with some hesitation, “I won¬ 
der if you would be willing to select it for me; seems 
to me it would be more like a gift, and I’d feel it 
more if you handed me the things yourself, than it 
would if I should go into a store and just pick them 
out and pay for them as if I’d earned the money.” 

“Very well, my boy, it shall be as you wish, and I 
will make the purchase.” 

Then I wrote to the Chief Justice and told him of 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


95 


the decision. His Honor replied in the following 
language: 

“Many thanks for your kind letter of January 
tenth, telling of your interview with the boy. Your 
description of it raises him in my estimation still 
further, and I shall be glad if my little present 
makes him happy. I hope you will find just what 
he needs for a present, and the rod and reel strike 
me as most suitable. If you need more to make the 
outfit what it should be do not hesitate to spend it 
and let me know.” 

Then the flu came; I was sick and weeks passed, 
but finally the purchase had been made, costing a 
little more than the value of the check, and Shanghai 
was again summoned. We sat in front of the fire 
again, just at sunset of a short, wintry day. And 
when the lad rose to go he remarked, as he held the 
rod and reel in his hands: 

“Pm going home tonight happier than I ever went 
before in my life,” 

And, if I read his illuminated countenance aright, 
the lad was speaking the truth. 

One day, a few weeks later, I had cooked a simple 
lunch for myself and was eating it alone in the 
kitchen of this old house, when I looked toward the 
road. Coming up over the hill, keeping step, heads 
in the air, were three boys; each boy wore a cap on 
the back of his head and carried a fish rod resting 
on his shoulder, as a soldier carries his rifle. It was 
a goodly sight, and I smiled. Then said I in my 
heart: 

“Isn’t that fine! The ice is out of the brooks and 
those little chaps are headed for Marten Stream. 


96 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


They think they are going to catch some trout, and 
they are just as mistaken as they can be. They 
won’t get a thing on this dark, cold day; but they 
think they will, and that’s the beauty of it. What 
a beautiful thing is the hopefulness of youth—the 
perennial expectancy of boyhood. And they are 
having a good time, and Shanghai is one of them, 
with his new outfit of steel rod, a reel and silk line. 
A happy time to you my laddies; you don’t catch 
anything today, but that does not matter, for you 
are hoping and expecting and you are breathing a 
bracing air and you are taking a brisk walk. Blessed 
are ye in thy innocent sport today.” 

At half past four, that afternoon, I was in the 
orchard, pruning a tree that stood in dire need of 
attention. So absorbed was I in my occupation that 
I did not notice the three boys approaching until 
Shanghai, leading the way, was near me. He came 
nearer; his hands were behind his back. He came 
closer to me and then held a brook trout before my 
astonished eyes. 

“I’ve had some luck today,” said Shanghai exult¬ 
antly, “sixteen inches long!” 

The boys did not stay long, because their trophy 
from Marten Stream, with its silver-white belly and 
shining ebony back, and its spots of carmine and 
blue and gold must be exhibited to others before its 
beauty faded. 

And so off they went, while I returned to my rath¬ 
er prosaic task and meditated on the “hopefulness of 
youth, the perennial expentancy of boyhood,” and 
the oft repeated statement that fish would actually 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


97 


take Shanghai’s hook at times when they would pay 
no attention to other people’s lures. 

The next day—Sunday—N. H. Hinckley, the As¬ 
sistant Supervisor at Good Will called me on the 
telephone. It was nine o’clock in the morning. 

“Are you going to be at Applehurst all day, to¬ 
day?” he asked. 

“I expect to be, but why?” I said. 

“Shanghai thinks he would like to go up and 
spend the day with you and have you cook that trout 
and he will share it with you.” 

In my heart I said: 

“Blessings on that boy,” but over the line to the 
Assistant Supervisor I said: 

“Good! send him up.” 

Shanghai and I agreed that it would be a burning 
shame or at least a frying shame, which is probably 
just as bad or worse, to cut that beautiful trout 
into short pieces and drop them into the fat. Our 
instinct and our reason united—the fish must be 
baked. 

Somewhere I have read a recipe for cooking a 
pickerel; it begins with these words: 

“Take a pickerel three feet long—.” 

I have always wanted to follow the instructions 
implicitly, but thus far I have not been able to 
meet the first requirement. I suspect there may 
be directions hidden away in this house somewhere 
for baking a trout—instructions that begin with the 
words “Take a square-tailed trout sixteen inches 
long,” but I could not find them. So the boy and I 
were left to our own judgment. I hunted for a 
baking dish but there is none in the house; the 


98 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


nearest to it is a tin consisting of twelve cups, all 
joined together for the baking of graham! gems or 
cup-cakes, and the like. We decided to use it. 

First we filled each of the cups with hot water; 
then we whittled three cedar sticks white and clean, 
and laid them across the tin so the trout would 
rest upon them while in the oven. Then we cut 
three deep gashes cross-ways of the trout and put 
strips of fat bacon in each gash; then, after a 
sprinkling of salt we put the tin, laden with the 
trout, into the oven. 

Of course there were other things to do—potatoes 
to boil, turnips to mash, the table to set and the 
like, and all the while we talked of what was in the 
oven. And when all things were ready we opened 
the oven door and indulged in “ah’s” and “oh’s” as 
the tin bearing the trout was carefully taken out, 
the trout done to a delicate brown, the slices of 
bacon being crisp and appetizing. 

There was a big platter upon a high shelf that I 
think had not been touched in a year; that platter 
had to come down from its high perch for service. 
There was room for another trout—yes for half a 
dozen—on it, but that did not matter; the surplus 
room on the platter added much dignity. Then the 
blessing was asked and the feast began. 

“Do you know,” said the boy, looking across the 
table, “I didn’t sleep much last night. I went to bed 
about half past nine, but I lay awake until after 
midnight. Every time I shut my eyes I would see 
that trout just coming out of the water on the end 
of my line—well, it would wake me up again. And 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


99 


the first thing when I awoke this morning I could 
see that trout just breaking water.” 

And behold, while we talked of the beautiful fish 
and how he was caught, and the rod and reel that 
were used to catch him—as we talked about the fish, 
I say, suddenly we discovered that there was no 
longer any fish to talk about; a few bones on my 
plate and a few in front of the lad—only this and 
nothing more. 

That was last spring. The other day—a day in 
August—Shanghai and I were out on Marten 
Stream ; it was raining and we were under a tent, 
watching the struggles of a camp-fire as it slowly 
succumbed to the dripping of the clouds. I spoke 
to my comrade about that trout and the pleasant 
time we had disposing of him. 

“Did I ever tell you just how long that fish was?” 
asked Shanghai. 

“Yes indeed,” I replied, “he was sixteen inches 
long.” 

“He was longer than that,” said Shanghai. 

“Careful,” I exclaimed, “careful boy; you told me 
it was sixteen inches. Then I heard he was sixteen 
and a half.” 

“Yes,” he replied, “but that was when I was on 
my way home with it. I had measured it with the 
joint of my thumb. When I got home Mr. N. H. 
Hinckley measured him with a foot rule, and he was 
seventeen inches—just exactly seventeen.” 

“Oh, Shanghai, it’s always that way,” I ex¬ 
claimed; “fish like that usually grow an inch at a 
time for a year after they are caught. ” 

But I must close this letter. I might moralize 


100 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


a bit, but you are not looking for a sermon tacked 
onto the end of this rather unsatisfactory epistle. 
You can easily guess what I would say if I added 
any comment to a simple recital; you can see that 
there are all sorts of investments in this world— 
ways of investing money, time, thought, and some 
investments bring better returns than others. 

The Chief Justice invested money; I invested 
time; both investments added a bit to the sum total 
of happiness in this world. I only wish the Chief 
Justice might have shared the trout with Shanghai 
and me, for after all there was enough for three. 
Yes; and I wish that you too might have had a taste 
of that Sunday dinner. 

Cordially yours, 



LETTER XVII 


My Dear Friend L—: 

My fireplace smokes like fury. This may sur¬ 
prise you and I never intended you should know it; 
you know that there are some facts that can be 
suppressed without deception. 

I do not mean that the fire-place always smokes; 
it is only occasionally that it offends, but today it is 
in one of its disagreeable moods. Ordinarily, if I 
come up here alone, with leisure to experiment and 
not caring if the atmosphere in the room smells of 
burnt birch, the smoke rolls up chimney with never 
a trace of it beyond the sheet-iron hood that comes 
down over it like a visor of a cap shading a villain’s 
eyes; but if I come up here a few minutes in advance 
of some caller just to get things started and to 
create a cheery atmosphere in the room, or if I bring 
some friend with me to share the joy of kindling the 
flame, this fire-place will send out soft, wooly clouds 
of smoke, thick and white, which proceed to dis¬ 
seminate themselves—if smoke clouds ever do dis¬ 
seminate—until it becomes the old story, 

House full, hole full 
Can’t catch a bowl full.” 

I learned long ago, that if I leave a certain door 
open two or three inches the smoke will all go up 
the chimney; but sometimes I do not think to do this 

until my eyes begin to smart. 

101 


102 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


I think you know that I like to do something 
different or have something a little different from 
others. For instance the first year I farmed here 
at Applehurst I sent away and got some oats for 
seed—wonderful, unprecedented, almost miraculous 
according to the seed catalogue—and I watched them 
till harvest time. I have a photograph of myself 
in that oat field in late June—my head just above 
the oats; I had a prodigious crop of straw and an 
amazing lot of chaff. 

No one around here keeps guinea hens, so I in¬ 
vested in these interesting fowls, and had a pair 
around here “filing saws,” or at least it sounded like 
it, until one of them died of arteriosclerosis, and 
the other followed from no apparent cause. I think 
I reported my loss at the time. 

I contemplated getting a peacock, but the winters 
are too severe in Somerset County; no one in the 
vicinity has a peacock and it would be different. 
And so would a jackass or a zebra or a camelopard 
but there are difficulties in the way of each. 

Last winter I hit on a scheme that promised to 
be profitable—not from a monetary standpoint, but 
in pleasure, in satisfaction and in a sense of having 
something different. No one around here raises 
ring-necked pheasants; they would be a little differ¬ 
ent, and to occasionally see these beautiful creatures 
as I strolled through the woods or along the hedges 
would, indeed, be gratifying. It is understood now 
that this particular breed of pheasants will prosper 
wherever the ruffed-grouse or partridge does. The 
grouse are very prosperous in the Good Will woods 
and also on my own woodlands. So, through the 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


103 


kindness and co-operation of friends at Augusta— 
the state capitol—I secured a setting—or a sitting— 
of pheasant’s eggs. I was about to purchase some 
bantam hens to sit on them when I learned that 
a Rhode Island Red hen, of medium or light weight, 
would do just as well or better. 

I wish now I had kept account of the time I de¬ 
voted to that biddy and the treasure I had com¬ 
mitted to her care. Her task was too important 
to be carried out in the hen-roost with others of her 
kind. She was to brood over something vastly 
more interesting than just ordinary hen-eggs; she 
had a small house all to herself and the door was 
kept closed so nothing would disturb her. 

She had the most cordial, and the sweetest dis¬ 
position of any hen I was ever associated with; she 
showed a spirit of co-operation quite unlike most 
hens engaged in a similar task. Sometimes I would 
go in the house to see her—she was sitting in an old 
cook-house, in a nest on the ground, so the eggs 
could have more moisture than ordinary hen-eggs 
require—and she never made any fuss. If I went 
close to her because I wanted to see whether the 
eggs were all there or whether the rats had dis¬ 
turbed them, she never gave the idiotic squawk 
which is indulged in by some sitting hens; she would 
just raise her feathers around the edge of the nest, 
and in a low, confidential but somewhat accelerated 
cluck, she would seem to say: 

“Gracious, do be careful; if you must look at the 
eggs, just remember that they are the smallest, ten- 
derest, brittliest eggs ever put under a Rhode Island 


104 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


Red of my avoirdupois. Remember, too, that a 
cracked egg never yields a chick.” 

Then I would investigate, and as soon as I was 
through, she would gather her feathers back close 
again and settle down for the long, long brooding. 

Seven of the eggs hatched; something happened 
to three of the tiny creatures, but the other four 
grew and prospered. They had every attention; 
the choicest food and distinguished consideration 
were always accorded them. 

When they were the size of quails they began to 
take care of themselves and to show distinctive 
characteristics; they were different. Then they 
began to be shy. It was interesting to note the 
marking of their plumage as they neared maturity; 
but the time came when I seldom saw them. I 
would say to Leslie: 

“Are my pheasants all right?” 

He would reply: 

“I think so; I saw three of them last evening 
when I fed the poultry and I saw one an hour before 
in the orchard” or some similar report. 

The last time I saw any of them one was flying 
along the wild-cherry trees that skirt the old wall. 
This was all to my liking; the experiment was 
proving a success. Mr. James, of the State House, 
at Augusta, suggested that I had better keep them 
in confinement through the winter, in order to be 
sure of eggs next spring; but I was trying an ex¬ 
periment. Would they stand our winter success¬ 
fully? If so, I would secure not one setting or sit¬ 
ting—of eggs but several, next spring, and pheas¬ 
ants would be a common but always a beautiful 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


105 


sight hereabouts. The land, between the buildings 
at Applehurst and the cottages at Good Will is just 
what pheasants like—woods, open fields, hedges, old 
fences, tall grass; there was every prospect that 
they would winter all right, but I wanted to be 
sure. 

When they came into full plumage, there was an¬ 
other gratifying and encouraging feature; two 
were males and two were females. As near as I 
could calculate the woods at Good Will and Apple¬ 
hurst were destined to be full of pheasants and of 
interest in due time: pheasants and partridges! 

Here comes the denouement. “If you have tears 
to shed” over a matter like this, “prepare to shed 
them now.” Last night my son was at some kind 
of a social occasion in Fairfield village. At the 
banquet table the man who sat next to him, asked 
if he knew whether there were or ever had been any 
pheasants in this town. The man explained that 
he had seen several and had told his neighbors about 
them; his neighbors would not credit him because 
no one hereabouts had any pheasants—that was all 
there was to it. 

My son informed the inquirer that the pheasants 
which he had seen were doubtless some which his 
father had raised the past summer. 

I understand the man lives about three miles from 
Applehurst. Alas! No one can tell where those 
pheasants are by this time. They appear to be 
scudding toward the equator like escaped toy- 
balloons before a North-Easter; they may be in 
Tennessee before Christmas for all I know. 

Alas, for my correspondence about pheasants and 


106 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


pheasants’ eggs last spring! Alas, for the book I 
purchased giving the history of the pheasant tribe 
and full instructions how to rear them! Alas, for 
the time that Mrs. Rhode Island Red spent brooding 
and then rearing the tiny creatures through pin¬ 
feather-hood to pheasantry! Alas, for the time 
that Leslie, under full pay, in this year of big wages 
devoted to them! Alas, for the scratch-feed that 
they ate—scratch feed that should have been de¬ 
voured by my ordinary chickens—Plymouth Rocks 
and Rhode Island Reds—just like what everybody 
else around here owns and feeds! 

In view of the depressing developments of the 
last few days—Leslie says he has not seen a pheas¬ 
ant since last Wednesday, and it is now Saturday— 
in view, I say, of the disappointing events of this 
week, and the sudden crushing of my ambition I 
know you will pardon me if I summon my muse, 
and so, with apologies to “Old Black Joe” if indeed 
apologies to anybody or anything should be wrested 
from me under the circumstances, I pen these mel- 
alcholy lines: 

Gone are the pets that were hatched so long ago, 

Gone from my fields where they had a chance to grow. 

Gone from these heighths to meadows damp and low, 

I seem to hear my pheasants’ croaking: “Here we go!” 

While I am writing these lines to you my cows 
and heifers are browsing around the house, filling 
up on bunches of sweet clover that escaped the har¬ 
vest of aftermath; my sheep, just home from the 
pasture, are in the unfenced orchard near the barn, 
alternating between the garden with its remnant of 
cabbage and cauliflower and the grass still green 



LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


107 


under the apple trees; over at the poultry house, 
cockerels and pullets are gulping corn and other 
grain provided for their growth or ominously scat¬ 
tered for their fattening; in the cellar, safely har¬ 
vested is my crop of potatoes, carrots and whatever 
else I have that should be stored in such a place; 
but all these things are just like my neighbors' and 
like everybody else’s in Somerset Country—nothing 
different. How different pheasants are, or would 
be if I had any; but the addled-pated ingrates are 
gone. 

I am undecided as to what I will do; one way 
would be to let my entire brood of pheasants con¬ 
tinue on their journey to Florida and the Gulf and 
forget it all; but, as a matter of fact, my spunk is 
up now and I am questioning whether I won't raise 
at least half a dozen broods of pheasants next spring 
and then see. I'll let you know later what conclu¬ 
sion I reach and in the meantime, I have no doubt 
you will extend to me so much sympathy as the sit¬ 
uation in your judgment, seems to require. There 
is continued close time on ring-neck pheasants in 
Maine; why did I not wring their precious necks 
while they were still residents of my poultry yard. 

Pleasantly, but not pheasantly, 

Yours, 



LETTER XVIII 


My Dear Friend L—: 

It is a long time since I have written to you, but 
my silence means little; I fear, too, that you will say 
that my letters do not mean much anyway. Since 
writing you I have celebrated my birthday again. 
As you know, I do not hesitate to celebrate my 
birthday any time when it is convenient and there 
is a good cake in sight, and so these celebrations 
have been scattered through the years coming in 
December or January, May or November, March or 
August, as the fancy seized me; but the celebration 
I refer to now came on the anniversary and so it 
was celebrated in July—on the twenty-seventh day, 
if I must be exact. 

When it came time to cut the cake, and the pleas¬ 
ant task was assigned to me, I took occasion to tell 
the assembled friends that while sixty-seven years 
seems short enough as one looks back upon it, such 
a period is long enough to admit of many things. 

In my case sixty-seven years proved to be long 
enough for me to be weaned, and to learn to creep 
and to walk: long enough to learn how to swim and 
to skate, to ride horseback and to coast down long 
hills; to weed onions and hoe corn and potatoes, to 
use a scythe and a rake; long enough to learn how to 
play marbles and ball, tennis and golf, quoits and 
mumblety peg; long enough to learn how to row a 
boat, to paddle a canoe, and how to use a gun and 

108 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


109 


rifle, a rod and reel; long enough to wear kilt skirts, 
short pants, long trousers, Prince Albert coats, 
starched collars, derby hats, and spectacles; long 
enough to use a razor, to raise a mustach and to 
have a touch of rheumatism; long enough to part 
with a full set of teeth—first crop—and to suffer 
with toothache, and to reluctantly part with the 
second and final crop one at a time; long enough 
to master the alphabet, the multiplication table, 
and to get some idea of English grammar, Latin and 
Greek, algebra and plane geometry; time enough to 
learn the names of trees and birds and fish and 
animals and flowers; time enough to learn to love 
the best in painting, in sculpture, in literature; time 
enough to face the problems of youth, and the 
great issues of life—the choice of a vocation, the 
place religion shall have in one’s life and just what 
is the relative place of dollars and cents in the final 
estimate of life and its value; time enough to be 
made a voter and to vote in town meetings, state 
elections and national campaigns; time to search 
the scriptures, to sing and to pray; time to see the 
introduction of the banana, the commercializing of 
the tomato as an article of food, and the exploiting 
of “breakfast foods” until they came into universal 
use; time to witness the introduction of the sewing 
machine, the mowing machine, the reaper, the 
gasoline engine, automobiles, motor-cycles, trolley 
cars, motor-boats; time to welcome the telephone, 
the phonograph, photography, moving pictures, 
electric lights, wireless telegraphy, wireless tele¬ 
phony; time to learn to cook some things, to play 
the organ, sing bass and to appreciate good music, 


110 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


to camp out, to bivouac, to climb mountains, explore 
caves, to cross the Atlantic, to be sea-sick and to 
want to die; time to hear great preachers who in 
their time were persuasive, eloquent, convincing— 
Henry Ward Beecher, T. DeWitt Talmadge, W. H. 
H. Murray, Joseph Parker, D. L. Moody; time to 
mourn over the assassination of three presidents 
—Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield and Wil¬ 
liam McKinley; time to weep at the open grave of 
father, mother and sister; time to form the choicest 
of friendships and to cherish them as the most 
valuable assets of life; time to preach more than 
four thousand times, and to talk in public on 
other occasions more times than I have counted; 
time to meet the dearest girl in the world, to fall 
in love, to be married, to set up house keeping, to 
be four times a father and seven times a grand¬ 
father; time to catch sunfish, chub, perch, pickerel, 
the gamey black-bass, trout, salmon, eels, horn- 
pout, suckers; time to hunt plover, quail, partridge, 
rabbits, deer, gray-squirrels and wood-chucks; time 
to see the rise and decline of the Good Templars, the 
waxing and waning of the Boys’ Brigades, the be¬ 
ginning of the Y. P. S. C. E. movement, the organi¬ 
zation of the Boy Scouts, the growth of the Y. M. 
C. A.; time to witness the change from the open 
saloon everywhere to the days of national prohibi¬ 
tion; time to watch the progress of the civil war, 
the abolition of slavery, the beginning and end of 
the Spanish war, the exposure of German design 
and the humiliation of the German government; 
time to have measles, mumps and whooping cough 
in childhood and to watch my children through the 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


111 


same ailments; time to be baptized, to baptize my 
bride, and my two sons and my two daughters; time 
to be authorized to teach in public schools, licensed 
to preach, and to be initiated into a great secret 
order; time to meet you as a stranger, to see our 
acquaintance ripen into a friendship, which has in¬ 
creased in value until I cherish it as one of my 
choicest possessions. 

Once there was a man living in this vicinity who 
often spoke of his varied experiences. He had 
worked in a shoe shop a stated number of years, 
had spent four years in college, had taught many 
years, had traveled extensively and done many 
other things. One of my neighbors became a little 
skeptical and adding together the years which this 
man said he had devoted to various interests in life, 
he made him out to be about one hundred and twenty 
years old. Measured in that way I must be older 
than I claim. I was eight years old before I went 
to school and was in public school six winters; I 
was four years in the Guilford Institute, taught two 
winters in Connecticut, spent two years in the 
State Normal School, taught three years in Rhode 
Island, and was four years in pastoral work. Three 
years I served under the American Sunday School 
Union, and three years as state evangelist. I have 
been editor of the Good Will Record thirty-three 
years, a registered guide in the Maine woods, I 
think, six years, a married man forty years, an 
ordained minister forty-one years, a director of 
the Good Will Home Association thirty-one years— 
a total of one hundred and eighty-six years, but I 


112 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


am not nearly as old as that, as you fully under 
stand; I am only sixty-seven, but gradually grow 
ing older. 


Affectionately yours, 



LETTER XIX 


My Dear Friend L—: 

The corn is in the shock; the potatoes, beets and 
carrots are in the cellar; the autumnal haze is on 
the hills, 

I am in a retrospective mood looking back over the 
weeks that have elapsed since I wrote you in seed 
time. I am rather interested and amused to discover 
that, whenever, in my thought, I attempt to renew 
the summer months, my “days off” stand out in bold 
relief; mind you I am saying “days off” and not 
“off days” which are another proposition. And my 
days off are convincing rather than reassuring. 
Most of those days—the ones that stand out so 
boldly—were spent at Audubon Rapids on Marten 
Stream, in my little tent, which though so near, as 
the crow flies, that one night the family in this 
house heard the blows of my axe as we—a comrade 
and myself—chopped wood at bedtime for our camp¬ 
fire, I was as isolated as I would have been in al¬ 
most any camp within a hundred miles. 

One of the incidents which convinces me rather 
than re-assures me is this: 

I was at camp Audubon; my comrade that day 
was a small boy who had come out to spend a few 
hours and he proved to be inspiring company. 
This round faced, pearly toothed chap had many 
questions to ask me, and in turn I asked many ques- 

113 


114 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


tions of him—questions about his parents whose 
care, through no fault of his own, he had lost. 

It was the middle of the afternoon when I said • 
to him: “All my guests in camp are treated just 
alike—it’s the same program for each and every one. 
When any one comes out here as you have we take 
a swim together in Marten Stream, then I beat him 
at pitching horse-shoes—usually about two games 
out of three—then we start the fire and cook sup¬ 
per, and while we are doing that we get ready for 
the evening camp-fire out there, right in front of the 
tent. Are you ready, Maurice ?” 

The lad’s face brightened when I said “swim”, 
but he looked thoughtful and skeptical when I talked 
as I did about my skill at horse-shoes; anticipation 
shone on his boyish features as I mentioned the 
two camp-fires—one for cooking and the other 
purely for esthetic purposes. 

A few minutes later, ready for the swim, we stood 
side by side at the brink of Marten, ready for a 
plunge. 

Suddenly the lad looked me in the face—a kind 
of daring defiant glance it was—and said: 

“I can swim across Marten Stream quickern you 
can!” 

“You can?” I said. “All right, Mosey, if you can 
do it, go ahead,” and I instantly dove deep and made 
my best effort. When I came up Mosey was six 
feet ahead of me and gaining every instant. We 
perched on a water-soaked log on the opposite side 
—Mosey having won out by about ten feet, and he 
exclaimed: 

“Said I could and I did!” 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 115 


“Of course you did, boy, of course you did;” I 
said, still panting from my effort, but your hair isn’t 
wet. I took a deep dive and you didn’t dive at all.” 

“All right,” retorted Mosey “I’ll beat you going 
back, and I’ll dive, too.” 

Before I had time to arrange any preliminaries 
or to reply, Mosey’s feet were in the air for a frac¬ 
tion of a second as he dove for the return trip. This 
time I omitted the retarding dive and followed; but 
Mosey was standing in shallow water on the oppo¬ 
site side, while I still had nine feet to travel, and 
even at that, I was puffing and blowing. 

“Said I could and I did” laughed my comrade. 

“Of course you did” I responded, “of course you 
did; but look at my broad chest; see these shoulders 
that I have to push through the water, and then 
look at your own little shoulders and your teeney- 
weeney chest. Of course you did; but if I were a 
boy, Mosey—” 

Alas, my friend, as I have said, the incident was 
convincing. It convinced me that, though a man of 
my age may recuperate in the woods, and he may 
even, to some extent, regain his youth, there are 
things at which he can never excell again; about 
my time of life every man must meet his Waterloo 
at the swimming hole or he must keep away from 
it to avoid humiliation. 

There was another incident equally convincing, 
and this came at the close of a “day off.” It was 
in the corn-roasting season and for the end of a 
perfect day I had invited nine Good Will boys to a 
corn-roast at the “Murray Tablets” here at Apple- 
hurst. 


116 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


It was the harvest moon and near its full. What 
a night! The tablets, as you know, are on the brow 
of a hill looking off over an open country, beyond 
which are woods and still farther away, the moun¬ 
tains. Once, in the evening we sent cheers to the 
westward hoping they would reach the ears of the 
junior class of the Good Will High school as it en¬ 
joyed a corn roast at Audubon Rapids, or still an¬ 
other group of corn roasters at Camp Navajo in 
nearly the same direction; but we got no response. 

While the fire was burning, and we were waiting 
for the flames to reduce the birch to a bed of hot 
coals for the roast, a game of leapfrog was pro¬ 
posed. I deliberately entered this game. The mas¬ 
ter of ceremonies suggested that I go up ahead and 
I did; “still further” he shouted as the other fel¬ 
lows fell in line behind me, and so I went still fur¬ 
ther toward the mountains over in Franklin County, 
till the line was ready and we all bent into position; 
over the bending forms of his comrades he came un¬ 
til he reached me, and then he seemed to fairly 
soar like a hawk, above me on his ninth leap and he 
took his position ten feet beyond my place. Oh, it 
was sport—great sport—as this leaping squadron of 
young athletes, following him scaled my bended 
form and went flying over the backs of those who 
had proceeded him. On they came, chuckling, 
laughing, each and every one an embodiment of 
physical alertness and sprightliness—the sixth, the 
seventh, the eighth, the ninth. All had now gone 
over me and it was my turn. I raised my head and 
looked forward. There were nine leaping frogs, 
each posed and poised and waiting for me to make 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


117 


my flying leap over each and every one; and the 
last in the line, as I saw him in the moonlight 
seemed to be pretty well over toward the mountains 
in the next county. Horrors! What if I should fail? 
What if I, at sixty-seven, should prove to be less 
supple than the rest of them? What if I should 
get half way down the line and my muscles should 
fail me and I should come down on some luckless fel¬ 
low’s back, right amid-ship, and break his spinal 
column; what if the victim of my fool-hardiness 
should go through life mained, disabled, suffering 
from curvature of the spine? What if I should get 
so jarred in the nine leaps before me that I should 
have to go to bed the next day for a series of mas¬ 
sages? What if, before I got to the end, I should 
loose my poise as I sailed over one of those trust¬ 
ing playmates, and should break my own neck? 
What would the public say when it read that the 
editor of the Good Will Record disabled one of his 
playmates and was himself instantly killed in a 
game of leap-frog while trying to carry his two 
hundred and fifteen pounds of avoirdupois over the 
seventh or eighth boy in line? What would you 
say? And what kind of an epitaph could any one 
prepare to cover such an inglorious demise? These 
thoughts, and others, equally disquieting, and an¬ 
noying rushed through my mind as I posed for an 
instant before I should start on my flying career 
over the leading forms stretching in an unbroken 
line so long that it might as well have been nine 
miles as only nine rods in length. It was an awful 
moment. It suddenly occurred to me that if a fatal 
accident should occur it would break up the corn 


118 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


roast to which I had looked with much anticipation. 
Leap frog was not on the program any way; I was 
under no obligations even though I had proposed 
the game. I hesitated. Then I shouted: 

“Go ahead boys; play the game; I’ll fix the fire.” 

It was a simple incident but, as I have already 
said, it was convincing; I was so fully convinced of 
something then and there that I shall never get in 
line again for a game of that kind. Let the kids 
leap and bounce and play sky-rocket if they choose; 
let them gambol like lambs in the pasture at sunset 
—I am no lamb; but I am convinced now that for a 
man past sixty-seven leap frog is out of the question. 

Another convincing incident, on a “day off” and 
Pm through for this letter. One day a Good Will 
boy, Francis Howard by name, and I were out at 
Audubon Rapids. We had spent several hours to¬ 
gether in happy comradeship. Francis wore a 
sleeveless sweater. I noticed the muscle on his arm 
and laid the end of my forefinger on it. 

“Where did you get that?” I asked, with heavy 
emphasis on the “where.” 

“Where’d I get it” repeated Francis, “got it work¬ 
ing. It was work that did it.” 

Then I laid my left hand over my right bicep 
muscle, reverently, and said: 

“But look at that!” 

“Oh, yes,” said Francis, mockingly, “I know 
where you got that.” 

“Where did I get it?” I queried. 

“You got it sharpening lead pencils in the office; 
and it’s what I call pudding.” 

“Look here, young man” I exclaimed with a mock 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 119 


show of indignation bordering on wrath “ you better 
be careful—mighty careful—what you say about my 
muscle. It may not be as hard as yours, but it’s 
mine, young man, it’s mine. Don’t you ever say 
‘pudding’ to me again. If you want to be knocked 
flat and then thrown into Marten Stream, just say 
pudding . Do you understand?” 

Francis assured me that he understood. “Of 
course I’ll not say pud—I mean, oh, I mean I’ll not 
say the word you don’t want me to say. But the 
word pud—I—I mean the word you don’t want me 
to say is a good one; it stands for something.” 

Francis and I talked about the jewel-weed—where 
it got its name and why it is called “Touch-me-not;” 
we discussed the yew with its delicate waxen berry 
as it grows on the banks of Marten; we studied the 
partridge berry and its flaming fruit; we talked of 
other things until Francis suddenly changed to a 
new subject and said: 

“We had a good dinner today out at Golden Rule 
cottage.” 

I paid no attention to the remark. 

“I say, we had a fine dinner today in our cottage.” 

I gave no heed to his palaver. 

“I remarked that we had a dinner—a mighty good 
dinner—today in the cottage” he added. 

“You did” I at last responded; “what did you 
have?” 

“We had—we had roasted meat, and potatoes— 
this year’s potatoes—and brown gravy, and string 
beans picked this morning and for dessert we had 
pud—i—mean we had, well, we had something 


120 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


made of bread and milk and eggs and sugar and 
spice and— 

“See here, my lad,” I said “you better be careful; 
you came dangerously near a break.” 

“I see I did,” said the boy, and we talked about 
the kingfisher that had just followed the stream to 
the westward, the wood-pewee in the big hemlock 
and the chickadees that literally swarmed in the 
woods. 

“Can you cook most everything?” queried Francis, 
breaking a silence of a couple of minutes. 

“No” I replied “I can fry bacon and eggs, cook 
vegetables, make biscuits if I have to, but I don’t 
pretend to be much of a cook.” 

“Can you make a pu—I—I mean can you make 
a pie?” piped the lad. 

“Franc” I continued, “you just look out. Knocked 
flat, thrown into Marten Stream”—those are the ex¬ 
pressions I used. “Don’t you say pudding—not to 
me.” 

It was not far from the opening of the school 
year. Francis was to be in the freshman class and 
his studies proved to be an interesting topic of con¬ 
versation, until he seemed to become very thought¬ 
ful—thoughtful almost to oppressiveness and then 
he remarked as he looked up to my face: 

“There’s something I want to say but I can’t say 
it—I don’t know how” 

“Why not, Francis?” 

“Well, there’s a word in what I want to say that 
Pm not supposed to use. It’s a good word and it 
ends in ding —d-i-n-g, ding,” and he chanted monot¬ 
onously, ding, dong, ding dong, d-i-n-g-DlNG. 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


121 


“Careful, Frankie, careful! Knocked flat; thrown 
into Marten Stream! Those are the very words.” 

My dear friend, did you ever try to cure a young 
person of using an objectionable word by threaten¬ 
ing a penalty. How did you come out? 

Francis and I had enjoyed our outing; swiftly 
had the moments passed; bright and sunny had 
been the hours. The time came for us to part. It 
was sunset and we had walked out of the woods to¬ 
gether. We came to the parting of the ways, and 
as we clasped hands, he looked up to me with a 
confidential air, and remarked in a low trusting 
tone: 

“It’s a word that ends in ding;—d-i-n-g.” 

We parted. He was almost out of hearing when 
I heard my name called. I paused and looked 
toward the west. Francis’ boyish form was sil- 
houtted against the orange sky. He waved his hand 
and shouted: P-u-d-d-i-n-g—pudding, pudding, PUD¬ 
DING. 

This letter is too long, far too long, but I started 
out to tell you what I had learned in my “days off” 
this year, and with apologies to Lord Byron—if 
apologies are called for—I am convinced that 

My days are in the shady time of life. 

The sprightliness and bounce of youth are gone. 

The steady step, the arm-chair and the couch 

Are best for me. 

Joyously yours, 



LETTER XX 


Dear Miss M. E.— 

Now that Christmas is past I must write you. The 
great day brought me many greetings from friends, 
and these tokens stirred varied emotions in my 
heart; but nothing that I received had the same 
effect that was produced by your unique gift. About 
a week before Christmas my good wife told me that 
a package had arrived by post; that it was addressed 
to me; that it was plainly marked as coming from 
yourself and that you would probably like to have it 
kept for me until Christmas day. So she kept it and 
I waited; I will not say that I waited in suspense, 
but I just waited. I cannot tell you just how I felt 
when Christmas morning came, and I opened the 
package and found the mouse-trap nestling in the 
bed of soft delicately tinted wool, and tied with red 
and green ribbon and baited with a pumpkin seed. 

I place a high value on this gift. From a mone¬ 
tary standpoint I do not fancy it ranks very high— 
we used to buy these traps before the war two for 
five cents, not including the ribbon and a pumpkin 
seed—but I long since learned that there is more 
than one way of estimating a gift. As I understand 
it, you are familiar with the harrowing details of an 
experience I had up here at Applehurst a few 
months ago when a mus domestica started on a jour¬ 
ney between me and a suit of underclothing which 
I chanced to be wearing that day. I confessed that 

122 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 123 


after the experience, I was a little undecided whether 
to sell Applehurst and start in somewhere else, or to 
attempt to exterminate mus domestica and all her 
tribe. 

Your gift speaks no uncertain language; it says 
to me: 

“Stay where you are; stand by your guns; annihi¬ 
late the pesky rodents.” 

I thank you for the inspiring message. With the 
trap you have sent me I believe I can do it, provided 
that pumpkin seed holds out, though why only one 
seed came with the trap I do not understand. 

There is another matter which interests me just 
now; I would like to mention it more or less confiden¬ 
tially—probably less. Satisfied that there isn’t any 
money for me in farming, I am thinking of becom¬ 
ing a poet. Such an idea had never occurred to me 
until recently; but lately I have been reading consid¬ 
erable poetry and have got quite stirred up. No: do 
not think of me as pouring over Shakespeare’s Son¬ 
nets or Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, or Bryant’s 
“Thanatopsis” or Poe’s “Raven” or any of the poetry 
which claimed our attention a few years ago. I have 
been reading the very latest poetry—the very up-to- 
datest poetical effusions in this new age which fol¬ 
lows the great war. Here, for instance, is part of a 
poem, reviewed in a magazine of national circulation: 

“A sulphur-yellow chord of the eleventh 

Twitches aside the counterpane. 

Blasts of a dead chrysanthemum, 

Blur. 

Whispers of mauve in a sow’s ear; 

Snort of a daffodil, 

Bluster of zinnias hustling through nasal silences, 

Steeplejack in a lace cassock 


124 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


Piroutetting before a fly-blown moon. 

Soap-bubble groans where the wheezing planets 
Abandon the jig.” 

When I read this I began to enthuse. Then I read 
from another poem in which are such soul stirring 
bits of inspiration as this: 

“My ears ring; I go blind; drops come on my forehead; I 
shake all over. I am afraid of going nuts. 

Get this. 

I want to dare everything. 

I want to say there’s a place 
Out here with potato blossoms 
And young frogs calling and 
Nobody home but a red sun 
Spilling hallelujahs over the prarie. 

$ * * $ * 

But something chokes me. 

I can’t act like I used to. 

I go yellow as grass when there’s no rain in July. 

I’m telling you.” 

This arouses me to a high pitch of poetic fervor— 
that is, a high pitch of modern poetic fervor. I can 
keep quiet no longer; so I dash off the following: 

I walked. 

A distant rumble, angry sky, a heavy clap of 
Thunder! A deluge, deep, dark, terrific. 

I walk some more and step 
Into a mud-puddle. 

I rage. 

The water creeps through a hole in the 
Bottom of my shoe. My shoe string 
Gets moist and dank with mud and slime. 

I hate 

Dank and muddy and slimy things 
Specially wet shoe strings. 

But my shoe string remains 
Dank, muddy, slimy. 

I don’t like iit. 

Ugh! 

That satisfied my poetic aspirations—I mean my 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


125 


modern poetic aspirations—for a time, but then I 
chanced to read the following lines of thrill and fire: 

“If I could catch the green lantern of the firefly 
I could see to write you a letter.” 

Then I began to aspire again—do you wonder? 
Soon after I was lifted into a realmn of mazy delight 
by the following: 

“I want to shingle a house. 

Sitting on a ridge-pole in bright breeze 

I want to put the shingles on neatly.” 

This last is the work, not of a poet, but a poetess. 
Think of the daring of her soul! What a flight of 
fancy! What a burning ambition! And the beautiful 
thing about it is that she can realize it; not all poetic 
fancies can materialize, but I see no reason why she 
should not sit on the ridge-pole and shingle to her 
heart’s content, do you? I would fear, were she on 
my roof that she might put the shingles on but-end 
up if I didn’t watch, but that is a matter of small 
import. The chief thing is that her poetic long¬ 
ing be gratified. But somehow the daring flaming 
lines fired me; I said to myself I, too, can be a poet— 
not one of the old school—not one of the Victorian 
age—but a modern poet. So I tried my hand again 
and feel sure the result will interest you. I intend 
the lines which follow as a preface to my “Complete 
Modern Poetical Works” in six or seven volumes: 

I sing of huckleberries, porpoises, pink shrimps and mint. 

My soul surges. I dip my pen in volcanic crater of violet lava. 
If I could perch on yon 
Pinnacle of steel tower I would 
Wash my feet in the ;milky-way, 

Brush my teeth with silvery 
Moonbeams, ride on the tail of 


126 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


Biela’s split comet. 

Oh, columbines, blue dandelions and blazing 
Daffodils, white mice and horse-chestnuts, 

Bantam roosters, telegraph poles and 
Yellow-paint. 

I pant; I stagger; I faint, 

Pass me the catnip.” 

And I promise, too, that I will send you all my 
manuscript before anybody else sees it. Of course 
if I decide to continue to farm up here on the hill I 
will have no time for literary work, but in the words 
—the immortal words—of the poet above quoted 

“I’m telling you.” 

Yours in poetic (modern) bliss, 


P. S. Since writing the above I have had another 
inspiration—modern—and I may send you another 
poem at once. It is a revelry of polychromatic sen¬ 
tentiousness—a riot of cryptic sentimentality—a 
holocaust of modern poetic fervor. It is a wonder. 
Of course it is suggested by one of the above poems, 
but in place of a “fly-blown moon” I have “lunar 
maggots,” and for “nasal silences” I have “snort of 
nostrils,” and I have other advances in both thought 
and diction. 



LETTER XXI 


Dear Life Member, Manhattan: 

There are three things which I must report to you 
before they escape my mind as things do in these 
busy days unless I give them prompt attention. You 
know that Good Will Farm, Applehurst and Clover- 
Slope—these pieces of property join—have been 
posted; in other words, hunting, trapping and the 
building of fires on these lands is forbidden and 
neatly painted signs announce the fact. The build¬ 
ing of fires, except by permission from the Good Will 
office is forbidden for the sake of safety; the prohi¬ 
bition of use of fire arms is due to the fact that so 
many people are wandering about in these woods 
and over the trails that a shot fired anywhere might 
result in accident; trapping is under the ban because 
we want to encourage wild life in this vicinity, and 
also, if there is to be any trapping at all—for skunks 
for instance—there are always boys at Good Will 
who covet the privilege and they should have it, and 
permission can be granted to them. 

Under these circumstances the sound of shot-gun 
or rifle in the woods hereabouts is disturbing, es¬ 
pecially if it be on a Saturday when the boys are 
out and in—“out” of school and “in” the woods. 

I was up here Saturday afternoon; two men and 
two boys were with me; we were putting down the 
foundations for the “Murray Tablets” which I will 

127 


128 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


write you about later and were very busy over a 
rather fascinating project. 

I heard the report of a gun or rifle; it sounded as 
though it were in the Applehurst woods but far 
away. I said nothing. Ten minutes later I heard 
another report and this time much nearer—in fact, 
as near as I could judge, it was on Good Will’s “Dart¬ 
mouth Trail” where that trail crosses this farm. 

There was no reason why any one should be shoot¬ 
ing there, but several reasons why no one should be 
doing it. 

I said to Henry, one of the boys who was working 
for me: 

“Did you hear that shot?” 

“I did,” replied Henry. 

“All right” I said, “drop that spade, get into those 
woods as quickly as you can, find the hunter, or the 
hunters, tell them that hunting is prohibited, ask 
their names, find out who they are and come back at 
once for we must finish work here this afternoon.” 

Henry started on the run. I think boys like to 
act as game wardens. But it seemed as though he 
would never come back, and I needed him. He 
finally returned and his report was preesented in 
three sections: 

1. Two boys with a dog and gun said they were 
from Fairfield. 

2. They did not know that hunting on the 
premises was forbidden and they will not hunt on 
this side the road any more, and 

3. If I want to know their names I will have to 
find out. 

Bless the boys! I don’t care who they are, and I 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


129 


won’t try to find out their names; but I wonder if 
they had a State license. 

Another thing I wish to report is of a different 
nature and not as interesting to me. An old friend 
whom I met on the main street of a busy city the 
other day told me, in response to a remark which I 
made, that his father-in-law used to say: 

‘‘When I sneeze, I notice that if I sneeze more 
than once I sneeze two or three times.” 

I would not attempt to argue the point with so 
observing a man as that father-in-law; but I 
mention his observation in order to introduce the 
statement that several times in my life, having done 
a thing once, I have done it two or three times. 

One of the things is the dispatching of worn-out 
horses, and I have just had my third experience. 

“Old Jess” my family horse is dead. She is dead 
because I decreed that it must be so. Jess never 
lived here at Applehurst—her domicile was at 
Willow-Wood, my real home. But she was a part 
of our life. Rev. John Todd, D.D., author of the 
“Index Rerum” and the “Student’s Manual,” while 
pastor of the Congregational Church in Pittsfield, 
Mass., owned a family horse which was greatly be¬ 
loved in the household. Just before the church ser¬ 
vice one Sunday morning the horse died. Dr. Todd 
went to church and he preached; but, afterward he 
confessed that never before had horses got into the 
pulpit with him, but on that Sunday the old pet—the 
family horse, was in the pulpit all through the ser¬ 
vice. And somehow “Old Jess” is in the sitting- 
room here as I write—I can’t keep her out of the 
house today; she is right here at the open fire. Yes- 


130 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


terday, in obedience to my instructions she was led 
to a neighbor’s stall and this morning she was led 
away to never come back again—led over into the 
back field and her life mercifully ended. For two 
years the event has been pending, but whenever I 
mentioned it there was always some one to plead 
that she be spared yet a little longer. 

In a very ancient book—the oldest book we have— 
it is declared that the horse, “paweth in the valley, 
and rejoiceth in his strength; he goeth on to meet 
the armed men. He mocketh at fear and is not 
affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword. 
The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear 
and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with 
fierceness and rage; neither believeth he that it is 
the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the 
trumpets, Ha, ha, and he smelleth the battle afar 
off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.” 

But that was not “Old Jess.” She may have been 
a lineal descendant but if so it was “away back.” 

Shakespeare described a horse, saying: 

“Round-hoofed, short jointed, fetlocks shag and long, 

Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide; 

High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong, 

Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide.” 

But “Old Jess” would hardly answer to that de¬ 
scription, though she had some most commendable 
qualities. 

Long before Shakespeare’s time proud Ninevah 
had her valiant men in red, and her streets were 
“filled with horses and chariots and the sound 
thereof.” 

Rome gloried in chariots, swift horses and the 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


131 


sound of wheels; I suppose some day a historian will 
record that the American republic gloried in gas 
wagons, chug carts and the sound of explosive 
engines. 

We will miss old Jess. 

There was no style about her but she could always 
be depended on for her best service; and she seemed 
all unconscious that there was anything lacking in 
her make up—any shortage of symmetry and grace. 
She went wherever bit and rein guided, and she went 
quite regardless of appearance or public comment. 
The driver might make all sorts of unfavorable com¬ 
ment on her appearance or worth but it mattered 
not to the patient creature—she would, before re¬ 
marks of condemnation or reproach had anything 
more than escaped the lips of the unappreciative, 
start off, to the best of her ability, and drag the 
merciless or abusive critic wherever he wished to go; 
for her to know where her driver wished to go was 
to be on the way, diligent, uncomplaining; she knew 
no such thing as revenge or retaliation. 

I used to sit out here on the porch at eventime, 
alone, listening to the faint sounds always in a place 
like this, when a day is dying; I used to linger here 
till the sun had disappeared beyond the hills of 
sapphire and the last drowsy insect had ceased its 
rasping for the day; then I would hear the sound of 
wheels—iron wagon tires grating on gravel road— 
and the measured trot of old Jess swinging into the 
gate-way. Then, as she reached the veranda she 
would stop, the precious freight of grandbabies 
would climb out of the carriage with laughter and 
all sorts of greeting, and jokes about old Jess’ slow- 


132 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


ness or homely gait, and Jess would give a twist of 
her head, stretch her neck downward and begin to 
eat dewey grass; she would wander a rod or two 
when left driverless in order to get the sweetest 
bunches of food—that was all; and whether an hour 
or three hours passed, when Jess and the carriage 
were wanted both would be found no farther from 
the stopping place than the poor old creature’s love 
for succulent food led her. 

Next summer there will be a change. I will be 
sitting here in the gloaming; I’ll hear a light rolling 
sound, a modern vehicle will wheel into the yard and, 
making a majestic curve will sweep up to the door¬ 
way. 

A chariot, a valiant horseman in red, the sound of 
the cracking of the whip and the hoof-fall of pranc¬ 
ing horse? No. Poor, patient Jess, hitched to the 
two-seated carriage, puffing and panting, reminding 
me of the night she was over-driven and became 
wind-broke? No. Instead of Jess and the carriage 
a modern vehicle, five-seated, 1920 model, 35 H. P. 
3-point suspension unit power plant, 4-cylinder en¬ 
gine, eccentric pump driven by spiral gears form 
crankshaft, tubular radiator, 12-volt single unit 
starter-generator with 12 volt storage battery, con¬ 
trol lever on ball pivot with locking device for each 
speed, 60-mile speedometer, locking, ignition light¬ 
ing switch, annular ball-bearing, ball-thrust release 
mechanism, hardened steel worm and worm wheel, 
semi-elliptic spring, dry multiple disc, tire pump, 
tire carrier with demountable rim, license bracket, 
ventilating windshield and electric horn. 

Old Jess was such a simple creature—just four 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


133 


feet, a mane, a tail, and a sleek neck; and this new 
arrangement sounds so complicated. And with all 
its complications it has no personality. The only 
way I will be able to tell whether it’s mine that is 
coming or one that belongs to my nearest neighbor 
or to a man in Texas, Oregon or Rhode Island will 
be to look at the number. Alas for the monotony of 
it all! 

But Old Jess is dead. 

Do you know of anybody that wants to buy a two- 
seated carriage of uncertain age, a single harness 
that saw its best days sometime previous to 1917 and 
a whip? I am not quite sure I want to sell at any 
price; there is something pathetic about the whip, 
the harness and the carriage. 

But Old Jess is dead. 

Sincerely yours, 



LETTER XXII 


My dear Mr. L.— 

I recall that in my boyhood days we used to have 
the “American Agriculturist” in our home from 
month to month. For me, personally, it was very 
interesting; neither father, nor any one else, seemed 
to care much about it but there was one item in the 
said “American Agriculturist” that rather staggered 
me. Each month it carried a motto purporting to 
be a statement of George Washington, the Father of 
his country, to the effect that agriculture was the 
most healthful, useful and noble employment of man. 
It was difficult for me to reconcile that statement 
with Washington's well known reputation for 
veracity. 

I could not convince myself m those days that I 
was doing any particularly noble work when I 
crawled on my hands and knees in the onion field, 
from seven o'clock to six, stopping only an hour 
for noon; I could not see wherein I was doing a par¬ 
ticularly honorable thing when I stowed away hay 
in the top of father’s barn, where the thermometer 
must have been up to one hundred degrees or more 
and the temperature increased with every forkful 
just brought in from the field; it was difficult for me 
to understand why I was having a share in the most 
useful employment of man, when I was hoeing corn 
or potatoes or driving the cows to pasture. 

I used to see Hon. Ralph D. Smith, the village 

134 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 135 


squire, after he had plead a case in court, playing 
croquet on the green in front of his house; the prac¬ 
tice of law seemed to me a very noble occupation. 

I used to call, occasionally, at the parsonage of the 
old north church—this was after I had become a 
member—and find the pastor resting in the early 
evening after he had preached two sermons on Sun¬ 
day, conducted a funeral and married a couple on 
Monday, visited several houses where there was sick¬ 
ness on Tuesday and by that time had his two ser¬ 
mons for the following Sunday well under way; I 
used to think that the ministry was a very honorable 
calling. 

I used to see Dr. Talcott hurrying past the house 
with his little medicine chest in his hand, slightly 
stooping, his eyes cast upon the path which he was 
following, as he went from house to house where 
there was sickness; it seemed to me that the occu¬ 
pation of a doctor was exceedingly useful. 

Of course I am older now than I was then and I 
have not much of a quarrel with the immortal Wash¬ 
ington ; but I am glad that he stopped where he did 
in the use of adjectives. If after using the words 
“Noble,” “Healthful,” “Useful,” he had gone a step 
further and said “most remunerative,” I think I 
would have discredited even the story of the cherry 
tree and the hatchet. 

And Benjamin Franklin,—the immortal Ben—is 
credited, I believe, with making a statement which 
J may have questioned at some time in my life which 
I do not doubt now. Was it not Franklin who said: 

“He that by the plough would thrive, himself must 
either hold or drive.” 


136 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


In the summer of 1917, urged on by the growing 
hunger of this old world, I came upon the hill at 
Applehurst, bought a pair of horses and equipment 
and set about farming. Some days I held the plough 
and on other occasions I drove while someone else 
held the plough; but I also had with me a young man 
in his teens, who was in the field at seven o’clock in 
the morning and remained until twelve, out again at 
one o’clock to remain until five thirty. That year I 
lost only two hundred dollars in my farming opera¬ 
tions. 

The next year I neither held plough nor drove and 
lost four hundred dollars. The third year I fell be¬ 
hind approximately eight hundred dollars. Do you 
see how it works? A loss in 1917; that loss doubled 
in 1918; and that loss doubled in 1919. 

I suppose you are familiar with the story of the 
man who wanted his horse shod. The blacksmith 
told him he would shoe his horse for him if he could 
make his own terms. The terms were one cent for 
the first nail driven, two cents for the second, four 
for the third, eight for the fourth and so on until 
the thirty-two nails had been driven. The story 
used to run that the man accepted the proposition 
but was never able to meet the obligation. He 
found to his chagrin that the shoeing of the horse 
was costing him $21,114,036.48. When I coupled 
that story up with the mathematical progression of 
my own account on the wrong side,—I confess it 
made me a bit nervous. 

If I continue to farm twelve more years, making 
fifteen years in all, and if each year the loss is double 
the loss of the previous year, the fifteenth summer of 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


137 


my agricultural pursuit will require $6,553,600.00 to 
meet the deficit. I am inclined to think that I bet¬ 
ter stop before long; if I keep it up only seven years 
longer and maintain the same progression it will re¬ 
quire $25,600.00 to meet that year’s deficit. I am 
pondering this thing at the present time and when I 
reach the decision I will write you again. 

Speaking of noble, honorable and useful employ¬ 
ments, I wonder if you can tell me why the most 
noble, honorable and useful of them all, according to 
George Washington, should be the butt of ridicule 
of people who are absolutely dependent upon 
farmers. 

I do not see the “Agriculturist” in these days but 
I do see each week an agricultural publication now 
in its eighty-fifth year; I do not often see a copy of 
it, however, without from one to a dozen caricatures 
of the very people for whom it is published. 

I have looked over religious magazines and publi¬ 
cations and periodicals for the benefit of the clergy 
but I do not find clergymen ridiculed therein; I have 
studied scientific publications more or less but I do 
not know any scientific publication that makes a 
business of holding scientists up to ridicule; I have 
looked over various publications devoted to medicine, 
but, for some reason, no attempt is ever made to give 
the impression that, after all, doctors are a ludicrous 
lot. 

Why should the word “farmer” so often, not al¬ 
ways—but most always—be preceeded by the word 
“old?” As I travel on trains I often hear such re¬ 
marks as: 

“An old farmer came to my door,” “On my way 


138 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


here I passed an old farmer on the road,” and 
“About sunset you will see the old farmers going up 
and down the road taking an evening spin after 
their day’s work.” 

I received a letter this morning from a man who 
has always been a successful farmer; he is respected 
and loved by all who know him, for his nobility of 
manhood, his honorable character and his very use¬ 
ful life. I knew him when he was seventeen years 
old and he announced, about that time, that he had 
decided what his life work would be—he would be 
an “old farmer.” 

He could not have gathered that idea of farming 
in the agricultural community where he had been 
brought up but he did get the idea somewhere that, 
although he was a man adapted to the work of the 
farmer and was in that employment because he loved 
it, it was an occupation that few people regarded as 
honorable or noble;—“an old farmer,” “a hayseed,” 
—and yet through all time, caricaturists, pigmies, 
and the thoughtless have depended and must con¬ 
tinue to depend on the farm for life. 

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher used to say, at the end 
of a railroad journey, he always felt as though he 
ought to go to the head of the train and shake hands 
with the engineer and fireman, the two men who had 
brought him safely to his journey’s end. 

Why should not our hat come off to the men who 
have brought us safely through another winter, sup¬ 
plying our table with fruits and vegetables, flour 
and cereals only to eternally be held up to ridicule? 

And after all it is my judgment that the New 
England farmer is to be congratulated. George 


LETTERS FROM APPLEIiURST 


139 


Washington and Benjamin Franklin are not the only 
men who have said wise things. There was a man 
who lived and wrote long before either one of them 
was born, and, perhaps his wisdom was equal to 
either Washington’s or Franklin’s. 

Agur said: “Give me neither poverty nor riches.” 

I suppose if he were living now and wished to ex¬ 
press the same idea he would say: 

“Let me be neither pauper nor millionaire”. 

There may be here and there a millionaire, who is 
famous, who is at second hand an agriculturist, who 
has made his money in the city and is spending it 
in the country, just as a farmer makes it in the coun¬ 
try and spends it in the city—but the New England 
farmer, if he terids to business—if he either holds 
or drives—will never know the grind of abject pov¬ 
erty nor will he ever be a millionaire. 

Somewhere between the two he will land, and 
Agur, when he uttered those words, was wishing for 
himself the most satisfactory condition possible—the 
middle of the road. 

I am told that when the census taker called at my 
house this winter he got somewhat mixed up. As 
you know I have been an ordained minister for forty 
years, have preached nearly every Sunday; I have 
for thirty years been Supervisor of the work of the 
Good Will Homes at Hinckley, Maine; for about 
thirty-three years editor of the Good Will Record and 
I have had various other interests. But the census 
taker admitted he did not know where I belonged 
and so, as I own a farm he would enter me as a 
farmer. I can not believe he put the disrespectful 
adjective “old” before it but bear in mind whether 


140 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


I have courage to keep up this experiment or not, I 
have got a deal of enjoyment out of my experiences 
of the past three years. 

If you hear I am not farming—that I have bought 
no fertilizer and that I am curtailing expenses in 
every direction, do not be disturbed; if you will 
come up this summer I hope to show you a garden 
free of weeds and reasonably successful and I will 
take you out and show you my little merino lamb 
born in January and another one in February and 
another in March, though I was to have had no 
lambs on the farm at Applehurst until April. I 
will show you where my guinea hen will have stolen 
her nest, and you shall watch the humming birds, 
near sunset, as they hum amongst the gladioli and 
nasturtiums. 

If you want to you may ride on old Billy’s back— 
Billy is my merino ram—but I do not know as you 
will care to do that for the only way you can get off 
is to slip off and woolen pants do not slip easily from 
wool though you will go like the wind until Billy 
unloads you. 

Cordially yours, 


P. S. After writing the above I received a copy 
of a religious weekly of very large circulation. One 
writer discusses some famous personalities—“men 
who loomed big in building up” that publication. 
He says of one man: 

“One of this type is a retired business man, who, 
now well up in years, devotes practically his entire 
income to good work done in secret. It not only 



LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 141 


keeps him busy, but wonderfully well and happy. He 
privately finances several missionaries in the foreign 
field, and keeps in frequent touch with them by 
mail, cheering and encouraging them in their work. 
He is also the financial mainstay, if not the sole sup¬ 
port of a number of poor invalids and shut-ins, and 
finds immense satisfaction in this humble and un¬ 
heralded service.” 

Please note that this retired business man is now 
“well up in years.” 

Then the writer says: 

“Another of the same sort was a lumber merchant 
on the Great Lakes, who gave liberally in secret to 
various worthy charities. He did not permit his 
name to be known, and even forbade the printing of 
his initials in any publication. His account with 
his Divine Partner was conducted on a liberal basis, 
and he invariably exceeded the tenth. It was the joy 
of his life to keep it in full operation and I know 
that he felt it to be a source of blessing.” 

Then this writer has occasion to mention a farmer, 
and says of him: 

“He helped the church, the schools, the poor and 
unfortunate, and foreign missions were never for¬ 
gotten. I can recall some of his lists which included 
substantial gifts to missions in foreign lands. He 
and his wife found the greatest satisfaction in keep¬ 
ing all investments of this kind a sort of hidden 
partnership, the details of which were given to no 
living person. Even the beneficiaries were not per¬ 
mitted to know the name of their benefactor, al¬ 
though many a humble preacher at home or strug¬ 
gling missionary abroad, thanked God for his un- 


142 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


known friend and invoked blessings upon him. My 
old farmer is now resting from his earthly labors 
these many years; but I have always been glad that 
it was my good fortune to know one who, though 
unlearned in the world’s estimation, was skilled in 
the art of laying up heavenly riches by making such 
excellent use of his opportunities on earth. My old 
Western farmer was a faithful steward.” 

Why reserve the adjective “old” for the farmer 
and why use it twice in one paragraph, when the 
last sentence would read much smoother with “old” 
left out? Why not say “old” business man, and 
“old” lumber merchant? 


LETTER XXIII 


Dear Mr. L— 

I suppose you are familiar with the expression so 
often used on farms—“between hay and grass,” 
and in justice, this letter ought to be so dated. 

The family, which through the winter months oc¬ 
cupied a part of this house, has moved to Clover- 
Slope—just across the circle, and the family which 
is to abide here through the summer will not arrive 
until about June first. So I have the freedom of the 
house, cooking my meals on the kitchen stove, or, if 
begrudging the time required to start a fire, falling 
back on my “Theros Mess Kit” and fuel cubes. 

I am feeding the last of my hay to horses and 
young stock, while the sheep and lambs are already 
nibbling grass in the orchard—old “Billy” jumping 
the fences several times a day in search of sweeter 
pastures, and the youngest lamb straying away from 
his mother and rushing about frantically calling for 
his ma. You will note that I say “his” mother; 
nearly all my lambs this season require the use of 
the pronoun “his” rather than “her”, and so I will 
have some lamb chops later in the season. 

Recently I had a distinguished guest to dinner—a 
man high up in theological and educational circles. 
One day the mail brought me a note reading as 
follows: 

“Dear George:— 

This is to inform and forewarn you that some day 

143 


144 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


this week I purpose to take a loaf of bread, at least 
two cans of Eastport’s best sardines, a lemon and— 
and—and—something else that is sweet, leave the 
train at Good Will Farm, take a bee line for Apple- 
hurst, where I shall expect to be received with such 
honors as the place affords, including an address of 
welcome by your distinguished self (Hebrew lan¬ 
guage preferred though Greek will do) to which I 
shall be prepared to make fitting response either in 
poetry or prose—possibly blank verse. How would 
Thursday (29) do? 

Yours, 


I read it with unalloyed pleasure, and the next day 
notified my prospective guest that Thursday the 
twenty-ninth was just the time; that I was delight¬ 
ed to know that he was coming; that he need bring 
no provisions unless he much preferred to do so, as 
I had plenty, and that the formal address of welcome 
was already prepared. 

I had no anxiety about the lunch—that was easy. 
But the address of welcome was quite another 
proposition. I had never studied Hebrew, and 
knew but one word of that language, and frankly, I 
was not very sure of that one. I had forgotten 
my Greek entirely, and Greek greetings were out of 
the question; but it was still possible to get up a 
classic welcome that would fit the occasion and meet 
the requirements of my coming guest. 

I would greet him in Latin, and he could make his 
response in Greek or Hebrew, as he chose, and thus 
the occasion would have a classic dignity quite un¬ 
usual up here on the hill. 



LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


145 


But at the present time there are only twenty-eight 
books in this house—twenty-six if I exclude a seea 
catalogue and the Gospel of St. John, both in paper 
covers. 

With such a paucity of cloth bound volumes, one 
would not expect to find a Latin lexicon in the house, 
and there is none here; and so, miserabile dictu, I 
had to depend entirely upon memory. 

It seemed fitting that I should address him as a 
brother, and so I decided on “0 fratre mihi”—“Oh, 
brother to me.” I recalled that the first Latin verb 
I learned to conjugate was “amo” “to love”; a few 
selections from “Amo” would be appropriate, I felt 
confident. But more vivid than “amo” in my recol¬ 
lection were the first words of Virgil's ^Eneid—“I 
sing of arms and the hero,” and so I decided on 
“Arma virumque cano” as a phrase that I could 
wisely utilize. Then there was “Tempus fugit” 
which an uncultured father told his inquiring son 
meant something about fly time; there was our 
national motto which would give my address a patri¬ 
otic air, as my guest is a patriot, and these words 
together with a “Haec fabula docet” indelibly im¬ 
pressed upon my memory and Caesar’s triumphant 
and immortal words would be sufficient, though I 
finally decided to inject “Ipse dixit”—“he said it.” 

The address then, when completed would read as 
follows: 

“0, fratre mihi; Amo amas, amat, amamus, 
amatis, amant, arma virumque cano, e pluribus 
unum, tempus fugit, haec fabula docet, ipse dixit, 
veni, vidi, vici.” 


146 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


I am not sure that you ever studied Latin, and so 
I will explain that my effort translates thus: 

“Oh, brother to me; I love, you love, he, she or it 
loves, we love, you love, they love; I sing of arms and 
the hero, one formed of many, time flies, this fable 
teaches, he said, I came, I saw, I conquered.” 

Put into English, it sounds inane, I admit; but my 
coming guest had requested a classic, formal greet¬ 
ing, and with limited facilities and brief time for 
preparation, what else could I do? 

On the morning of the twenty-ninth I went over 
the trail from Applehurst to Good Will and stopped 
at the office in the Prescott Building; my son went 
to the station to meet my guest and escort him to 
the office. I watched the 10:45 train as it stopped 
and then moved on; I saw the two men meet and 
walk together toward the building, and when near 
enough, so that the ceremonies could be carried out 
with dignity, I walked down the path. At the 
proper moment I halted and addressed the newly 
arrived guest: 

“0, fratre mihi” and the rest of it. 

As soon as I began to speak, my guest looked 
scared; he cast an inquiring, appealing glance at my 
son, who smiled but said nothing; he looked again at 
me, and then for an instant to the ground and then 
off to the hills. 

“Does your father—is this the usual—” he began, 
apparently embarrassed. 

But I interrupted him, and I think relieved him by 
saying: 

“Not being familiar with the Hebrew, and having 
forgotten Greek, I had to fall back on Latin; this is 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


147 


the formal address you requested. Where’s your 
response? You haven’t any.” 

“I believe that I said that my response would be 
or might be in poetry or blank verse—I—I think it’s 
blank,” he replied. 

The formalities being over, we had a royal good 
time. My daughters came up early in the day, as 
they said “to set things to rights” and when they 
left, before my guest and I arrived, they had set the 
table in a most tidy, attractive fashion in the dining¬ 
room. When I am here alone, I eat either in the 
kitchen or the parlor. 

Once while we were lunching, my guest said: 

“Oh, isn’t this fine! I knew as soon as I arrived 
that a woman had been in the house.” 

Oh woman kind, thy name is home-creator; not 
home-maker, or home-builder, for those who make 
or build use material, but out of nothing thou canst 
create a home-atmosphere. What can mankind do 
without thee? 

Those daughters were up here less than two hours 
—they found a house; they left a home. It is only 
four days since they were here, and the place has 
degenerated into just a house again; anyone who 
enters here today will know, soon as the threshold 
is crossed that a man lives here alone. Everybody 
understands. Even a fourteen year old boy came 
up here the other day; it was raining, and I had 
been picking over beans for planting; into one dish I 
was putting the seed beans; into another I was put¬ 
ting beans not quite right for planting, but too good 
to throw away; I was throwing discolored or broken 
beans and chaff on the floor to be swept up soon as I 


148 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


was through. I asked the boy in, and the floor was 
so covered with chaff, bits of bean pods, moulded 
beans and the like that I thought I must explain to 
the boy that it was because I was sorting beans that 
the place looked so neglected and the floor so disrepu¬ 
table. So I said unto the lad: 

“I suppose you understand why this room looks as 
it does.” 

“Oh, yes,” replied the lad with a knowing and 
sympathetic smile, “you are living up here all 
alone.” 

Well, the loaf of bread was cut, the cans of sar¬ 
dines were opened, the bacon and eggs were fried, 
the postum was boiled, the preserved fruit was por¬ 
tioned out—a second helping of each, thank you— 
and finally the sweets were passed. We talked of 
agriculture and the effect of farming on the nervous 
system; we discussed the high cost of living, the 
Inter-Church drive then in progress; we compared 
views on premillenianism, spiritualism and other 
doctrines; we failed to get up an argument on any 
subject; the time passed too quickly and we said 
“good bye” in the mother tongue. 

In the future, I expect to greet my friends in plain 
English, the formal expression of greeting having 
been such a failure, but I have a Latin address as 
classic as the day is long, all ready in case of emer¬ 
gency, 0 fratre mihi. 

But I’m still “between hay and grass.” As I have 
said one family has gone to make way for the regu¬ 
lar summer occupants, but the occupants have not 
come; the cows are in the barn, the sheep nibbling 
grass. Besides this there are other signs that it is 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


149 


neither winter nor summer. For instance, crows, 
robins, blue-birds, meadow-larks, juncos, grackles, 
yellow-hammers, sparrows, black-birds, tree swal¬ 
lows and the hermit thrush are here, but the orioles, 
bobolinks and other feathered friends delay their 
coming. I have set out a hundred little lilacs, 
planted peas, sowed onions, sprayed the orchard and 
raked the lawn, but no work can yet be done in the 
fields, and so, “between hay and grass” I write to you. 

Cor-dially yours, 


P. S. I am inclined—yes, I am persuaded—that 
my guest enjoyed the occasion as much, or almost as 
much as I did because, since writing the above I 
have received a letter from him. He has apparently 
forgotten how he fell down on the formalities, and 
it is well that he should; I don’t know just how to 
interpret his reference to the liquid refreshment 
which flowed so freely at our feast for he pronounces 
it “perfect” of the kind but it sounds to me as 
though he was not quite satisfied with the kind. But 
I’m sure the letter will make you want to come up 
and see me and so I enclose it. 

“My dear George:— 

I would not under any consideration fail to ob¬ 
serve all the proprieties that should obtain in con¬ 
nection with the recent exclusive social function at 
Applehurst. I write to say that in my opinion no 
more delicious bacon was ever served in the Kenne¬ 
bec Valley. The quality of the turnip cannot be 
surpassed. The eggs gave every indication that the 
hens producing them are not allowed to partake of 



150 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


food of inferior quality. And the postum, what 
shall I say of the postum? Indeed, nothing need be 
said, other than this—it was perfect postum. 

Of course under the circumstances I cannot speak 
of the sardines and the bread. But I wish to affirm 
that to my mind the table decorations were distinctly 
suitable in every way satisfactory, not to say beau¬ 
tiful. In fact the whole occasion was characterized 
by a simplicity and richness that made the event out¬ 
standing in the annals of Good Will and its environ¬ 
ments—or words to that effect. 

I am writing hurriedly as I am about to take a 
train for Boston. Otherwise I should amplify more 
freely in touching upon these incidents of so much 
interest. With true affection, your friend of earlier 
and later years.” 


LETTER XXIV 


Dear Mr. L.— 

You told me, the last time I saw you, that you 
could reveal some things about farming, the revela¬ 
tions to be based on your actual experiences a few 
years ago when you left the office and became an 
agriculturist. But there was not time that day, and 
so I am yet in the dark; but I infer that, having 
devoted several years to farming, you can sympa¬ 
thize with me, in any and all of my experiences up 
here on the hill. There are people, however, who 
claim that a person cannot fully sympathize with an¬ 
other unless he has passed through exactly the same 
experience. And so Fm wondering if you kept 
sheep. If you did you will understand and sympa¬ 
thize Fo the fullest extent; if not—well, if you have 
never kept sheep then you know only in part. 

Last night my sheep came home, as the old rhyme 
has it, “bringing their tails behind them.” They ar¬ 
rived just after midnight. I had placed them in a 
rented pasture some distance away and there was no 
sense in their coming back as they did. When they 
arrived they found that the orchard where they had 
browsed all through the spring had been ploughed, 
so they gained nothing by their return. 

I suppose “Old Billy” happened to discover a weak 
place in the fence somewhere and came through, and 
in the most unreasoning, unreasonable and repre- 

151 


152 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


hensible manner, if one sheep goes anywhere the 
rest will follow. 

I remember reading—perhaps you read the same 
item a few years ago—that men were driving a flock 
of about five thousand sheep through the mountains 
some where in the West; one sheep chanced to jump 
and disappear down the mountain in a deadly fall, 
and the rest followed until practically the entire flock 
had leaped to its death. 

When my sheep came home I paid no attention to 
them; I laid under the light blanket and meditated 
on the general simplicity of the sheep family; but 
soon after daybreak they ceased to bleat and an idea 
occurred to me: “What if they had gone to my gar¬ 
den?” I arose, looked out of the window, and dis¬ 
covered that the sudden quiet of the flock was due, 
in part at least, to the fact that some of the sheep 
had discovered the two long rows of peas—the peas 
that were up the highest and growing the most luxu¬ 
riantly. There was an abundance of tender grass; 
there was plenty of sweet, tender clover; but all 
these must be ignored if there was a chance to tackle 
the choicest corner of my vegetables; and these 
wooly idiots were doing their best to write the word 
failure on my garden for the year 1920. 

Would you think that was enough? No; I allowed 
the whole flock to loaf around the house for several 
hours. I had planned to plant two rows of a choice 
variety of potatoes that day—through the middle of 
the garden. I carried a bag of fertilizer and the 
basket of seed potatoes, carefully cut, out to the end 
of the plat and began to open the hills with a hoe. 
I had opened forty or fifty hills, when I happened to 


i 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 153 


look back of me, and there was “old Billy” with his 
head in the seed basket. He was munching my seed 
potatoes—seed potatoes at $6.50 per bushel. Why I 
could lunch the adled-pated brute in a Pullman Din¬ 
ing Car, a la carte and the whole meal, including a 
generous tip to George wouldn’t cost what those 
potatoes had cost me. So I sailed down the slope 
toward Billy and the basket trying to convince him 
that he was costing me more than he was worth. 

Just another word about “Billy” my merino 
ram. Last summer he was a bit unreliable and it 
was understood that it was better not to go into the 
orchard without some means of protection. But this 
spring he was kind and gentlemanly; I walked past 
him two or three days in succession after he had 
begun to jump the fence, and as soon as he saw me 
approaching the would look for a place to jump the 
fence into the orchard again. 

So it came to be understood that Billy was harm¬ 
less—as harmless as a lamb—and so he was allowed 
to nip the choicest clumps of grass he could find any¬ 
where, and these clumps were all out of the regular 
pasture in the orchard. It came about eventually 
that I paid no attention to him; this seemed to be 
saisfactory to him and it was eminently so to me. 

But one Sunday morning in May—it was a bright 
morning—Billy had left all his wives and offspring 
in the orchard to pick up what they could and he was 
revelling in the tender grass on the lawn near the 
house. 

A happy thought occurred to me. Why not show 
Billy a kindness? I knew he was fond of sliced 
ruta-baga and preferred it even to the best and ten- 


154 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


derest lawn grass; sliced ruta-baga was peaches and 
cream for Billy. So I prepared a handful and went 
out; I held out my hand to indicate that I had some¬ 
thing good to eat. Billy moved toward me in an 
inquiring attitude. When he was about six feet 
from me, not being sure whether he—the dear creat¬ 
ure—would, lamb like, eat out of my hand, I threw 
the succulent chips to the ground in front of him. 
Billy immediately began to sample them, and sud¬ 
denly, with his mouth full of my bounty—raised 
himself on his hind legs, lowered his head and 
started for me. Zip! The veranda was close at 
hand; mine was inglorious retreat. 

There are rams and there are dogs. A dog will 
lick the hand that beats him; a ram will knock down 
the man that feeds him and then butt the life out of 
him if he has the chance. 

Two or three times this spring I have been about 
ready to sell my flock. I didn’t like the attitude of 
“Old Billy”; two or three of the ewes were specially 
aggravating, and the lambs showed a disrespect that 
was reprehensible to say the least. Whenever the 
whole flock scaled the fence and came out of the 
orchard, of course the lambs were with their moth¬ 
ers. But when I would rush out of the house, ges¬ 
ticulate wildly, or shout at the top of my voice to the 
flock, every last one would scale the fence again— 
and the lambs—six of them would get together re¬ 
gardless of the whereabouts of their mothers and go 
galloping through the orchard, away from me, and 
when they were in the air, all four feet free from the 
ground, they would give their bodies a ludicrous 
twist or wiggle, then striking the ground they would 



LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


155 


bound into the air and go through the same twisting, 
wiggling performance again. The sight of the little 
scamps celebrating their escape was usually too 
much for me; it always evoked my risibilities and I 
would forgive them. 

You ask why I persist in keeping them. I will tell 
you; it’s a sense of duty. I must do my part toward 
clothing the people in this great country. As I 
write this I am wearing a suit of clothes. This is 
the third time it has been worn. It was worn first 
by sheep—sheep like those of which I am writing. 
Then the wool was carded, spun and woven; about 
six years ago it was made into a suit of clothes and 
worn several months. Then it went to the rag-man, 
thence to the shoddy-mill, and now I am wearing it. 
I paid three times what the suit would have cost six 
years ago. You say: “Yes, but you get enough for 
your wool so you can afford to pay three times as 
much for what you purchase. Listen. A year ago 
wool was seventy-two cents a pound; this year it 
brings the farmer thirty cents if he can sell it at 
all. So I’m wondering if you ever kept sheep. If 
you did then you know and can sympathize. 

Cordially yours, 



LETTER XXV 


Dear Friend:— 

I am going to confide in you. This does not mean 
that I am going to tell you a secret, a bit of choice 
and perhaps damning gossip and then ask you never 
to tell; it only means that, with a confidential air, 
as friend to friend, I am going to say something to 
you—you, so far away and in environment so unlike 
mine—and then you may do as you choose; you may 
keep the statement as a profound secret or you may 
tell your wife and enjoin her not to tell; yea, she may 
tell her most confidential friend and bind her to the 
greatest secrecy; or if you choose you may post the 
statement on a bulletin board in the post office. 

Now I must say that when I sat down and wrote 
the first words of this epistle—“My Dear Friend” I 
had no intention of referring to your good wife and 
her feminine friends as I have; in fact I am not re¬ 
sponsible for the idea herein expressed. But just 
as I was thinking of this idea of privacy, this “don’t 
you ever tell any one” habit of some people and the 
mischief done by it, I recalled what is said of Gilbert 
Stuart the painter whose unfinished portrait of 
Washington is so familiar to you. It is related that 
Stuart would sometimes say: 

“Suppose you know something that no one else 
knows. How many know it? 

Of course the reply would be “One—only one.” 

“That is true” Stuart would say, “put down a I” 

15G 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 157 


“and now suppose you tell your wife and instruct 
her never to tell it to a living soul; how many will 
know it now?” 

“Two” would be the reply. “Very good” the 
painter would rejoin, “put down two thus II.” 

“And now” he would continue “suppose your wife 
tells it to her most confidential friend and cautions 
her never to breathe a word of it to any one; how 
many will know it now?” 

“Three” some one would reply and Stuart would 
say “put a one beside the other two.” 

Some one would put down the third unit so 
it would look like this,—III; then Stuart would 
exclaim: 

“That is not three, my friend, that is one hundred 
and eleven.” 

Please pardon this degression and this waste of 
my paper and your time; also this unsanctified fling 
at the gentler side of the now fully suffraged family 
—it is not my fling and I disclaim all credit for it 
and all responsibility for it as well. 

The fact which I am going to entrust to you while 
I am in a confidential mood is this: “In my own best 
judgment I am not a successful farmer.” 

Perhaps you have suspected this; mayhap you 
have been expecting such an admission from me; it 
is quite thinkable that you may have expresed your 
own opinion of my efforts along agricultural lines in 
complete harmony with my now settled convictions. 

But this does not mean that there are no success¬ 
ful farmers; I think there are many of them, but no 
man with the restriction and limitations from which 


158 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


I suffer—no, I mean by which I am hindered—can 
succeed. 

In the first place I hire a young man to do the 
work; he in turn has to occasionally hire a man to 
help him because single-handed farming is a vexa¬ 
tion of spirit and almost impossible. Last summer 
I did not hold plow or cultivator; nor did I go into 
the hay field once nor touch the wheat and oats in 
harvest time. It is true that I had a garden with 
rows more than three hundred feet long—rows of 
carrots, onions, parsnips, beets, sweet corn, string 
beans and cucumbers and when I did anything these 
log rows required my attention. If I could have 
done all the work on the farm myself I would have 
saved the expense of labor, and my account book 
would look different on the balance page; but the 
man—a born farmer, with farmer instincts, and 
farmer sense and farmer gumption—had to be paid 
and I was glad to pay him for he deserved it, but, 
alas, for the profit side of the account. 

But I have had other difficulties and hindrances 
which the average farmer does not experience. For 
instance, in July—right in the midst of things—I 
went off to Lake George, New York State, and was 
gone two weeks. My young farmer kept up his end 
but I stipulated that he should not work in the gar¬ 
den ; so while I was gone the weeds and grass among 
those long rows struck a 2:10 gait; it was nip and 
tuck between vegetables and nuisances and had I not 
returned when I did and called a halt the nuisances 
in the form of witch-grass, pig weeds and wild mus¬ 
tard would have won out against beets, onions, car¬ 
rots and the rest of my garden family. I had to call 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


159 


in outside aid, in shape of Good Will boys to sup¬ 
press the riot in those long rows and this resulted in 
a further shrinking of my purse, and an ungainly 
row of figures on the expense side of my account. 

This is not all. I had in my plans a bit of stone 
work where the “Bowdoin Trail” through the Good 
Will woods comes out on my farm, and ends on the 
east slope of the hill. There were stone to be hauled 
for this purpose, and sand and cement. I used to 
encourage my man to desert the real farming on all 
sorts of pretences—wet soil, damp weather, threat¬ 
ened rain and the like—to do things for this “End 
of the Trail” monument. The monument stands 
there and I am glad but it is not a profitable venture 
from a farmer’s standpoint: there’s no money in it 
and it hindered more or less. 

There was still another hindrance almost as potent 
as purslane and witch grass in a garden and it, too, 
was profitless; I refer to my ambition to build a road 
from this house through the back lot, over the hill, 
down to Good Will Farm. I began to build this and 
I would say to my man: 

“Now, of course, I don’t expect you to neglect the 
farm but whenever its too wet for the regular farm 
work or it looks like rain, or is misty or—well, when¬ 
ever you can work on the road I’ll be glad.” And, 
inasmuch as he has a constructive instinct, he was 
as ready for road work as I was anxious he should 
work there; and while a man works on the road, in 
any sense of the word, the weeds will grow; and if 
you have the man on “off jobs” when farm work 
should be done, it is not his fault, but it reduces 
profit. 


160 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


But, alas, there is still more to be said. I was 
troubled more or less with ideas; these ideas had to 
receive attention or they would be lost to me forever, 
and though the loss would not appear on the farm 
account, it would be none the less serious to me. 
Sometimes it would be an idea for a sermon to the 
Good Will boys and girls on a Sunday afternoon in 
the fall, and I would have to go to the house and 
look up the text and be sure of it, or to put the skele¬ 
ton of the discourse on paper; or I would get an idea 
that I could put a better bend in the road I was build¬ 
ing through the woods or that some trees ought to 
be planted near the stone monument and I would 
leave the legitimate work of farm or garden to at¬ 
tend to these things which show no profit on the 
account books but which interest me. All these 
non-farming ideas hindered me more or less. I 
don’t know whether my neighbors understood how I 
was hampered in my garden and farming by them 
or not; but one day I was sitting quietly in the woods 
—a breathless day, not a leaf moving—when a chick¬ 
adee perched on a twig directly in front of me and 
cocking his head on one side, he said: 

“What’s the idee? What’s the idee-dee-dee? What’s 
the idee? 

My trouble with ideas seemed to be spread to 
feathered creatures. 

But I have well defined plans for the top of the 
hill; the stone monument is completed and the road 
through the woods will be in time—no profit but lots 
of pleasure. 

Then to clap the climax I was in the garden the 
other day and the idea of a poem to be read at the 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


161 


Grange struck me; it was a feeble idea but I had to 
attend to it then or not at all. So the weeds pros¬ 
pered and the garden suffered for lack of a dust 
mulch while I went to the house and wrote some 
“lines”—not a Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” not a Long¬ 
fellow’s “Morituri Salutamus” nor a Gray’s “Elegy 
written in a Country Church Yard.” Alas, no; just 
a few lines on early cucumber planting, but I have 
already read them at the Grange and got them off 
my mind. They are as follows: 

One day I planted some cucumber seed— 

A frost will kill cucumbers— 

I planted enough to meet my need, 

Enough and ito spare is my garden creed— 

A frost will kill cucumbers— 

The short nights were warm, the long days bright— 

A frost will kill cucumbers— 

The seedlings were really a beautiful sight, 

In planting so early I thought I was right— 

A frost will kill cucumbers— 

One day there came down a quiet rain— 

A frost will kill cucumbers— 

It gently watered the newly sown grain, 

That day f could see my cucumbers gain— 

A frost will kill cucumbers— 

A evening wind came out of the west— 

A frost will kill cucumbers— 

It fled before a most unwelcome guest, 

At day-break I started out in a quest— 

A frost will kill cucumbers— 

In quest of cucumber vines I went, 

There were signs that my time had been misspent 
As over the frost-biitten leaves I bent— 

A frost will kill cucumbers— 

I hoped ahead of my neighbors to get, 

And some of my neighbors wanted to bet 
On a killing frost proceeded by wet, 


162 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


And said that rash planting I would regret; 

But on early “cukes” my heart was set 
And so for myself I had spread the net, 

But a frost will kill cucumbers. 

Think of a man neglecting a chance to have the 
banner garden of his section of the town to “jot 
down” such stuff. There is no profit in such works; 
they are vanity — vanity —vanity. 

But, my friend, listen to me while I make further 
statement. It is this: While I am not a successful 
farmer, my farming here on the hill is successful; it 
is successful because it brings me in touch with the 
soil—with Mother Earth. 

Sometimes I wonder that we—“of the earth, 
earthly” live as long as we do. We sleep on the sec¬ 
ond or third or tenth floor above the earth’s surface; 
we walk on concrete pavements; we ride over tarvia 
roads. We ignore instinctive demands; we do this 
deliberately, continually and to our own disadvant¬ 
age, and then we wonder what ails us. 

Do you remember the day I told you about by old¬ 
est son when he was two or three years old; how 
there was an English ivy vine growing in an earthen 
crock which stood on the floor; how the little fellow 
would waddle to it and, when no one was looking, 
would take the soil from the crock and put it in his 
mouth and then get his hands patted for soiling his 
white pinafore and also for doing such a naughty 
thing as stealing the soil from the English ivy; how 
the little fellow began to blanche until he was waxen 
white, and became too feeble to walk any more and 
could not even stand on his feet; how for three 
nights he neither slept nor retained the most deli- 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


163 


cately prepared foods; how the doctor came and left 
medicines and the child grew worse and we changed 
doctors and the new doctor left white powders folded 
in white paper and assured us that when we had ad¬ 
ministered two of them that the little patient would 
surely sleep; how the powders failed to work as pre¬ 
dicted and we rushed to the country and into a va¬ 
cant cottage and let the child lie or sit on the lawn 
and how he pushed his little fingers, pale and slender, 
into the clipped grass and dug up the soil and put it 
between his white lips and gulped it down; how I 
scolded and plead with the mother not to allow him 
to do it and she exclaimed that she was doing her 
best to keep him from doing such a thing—for it 
stood to reason that a child whose stomach could not 
retain the most delicate foods could not digest gravel 
or garden soil; how, finally, it occurred to me that 
though he had done this fool-hardy thing several 
times the soil had not killed him, and he was already 
gaining ground—gaining ground in more senses 
than one; how the child lived and grew to manhood 
and is more than two hundred pounds, avoirdupois? 

Do your remember it? Well, that was a child’s 
instinct; and the instinct triumphed over the 
knowledge and wisdom of parents and the skill of 
physicians. 

Do you remember that sixty years ago, when we 
were little chaps we used to go in swimming, and 
then, coming out of the water we would smear our 
bodies with mud and lie around in it, and glory in 
it, and then, rather reluctantly dive and part with 
the coating of sticky soil? Thirty years ago I was 
amused and interested to note that boys were doing 


164 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


the same thing; yesterday—sixty years after you 
and I used to do it,—boys were still doing it—I saw 
them. “A foolish boyish trick” you say? I say 
“instinct.” 

More than one winter I have, after being housed 
on floors and pavements, and cut off from mother 
earth with rubber overshoes, looked out of the win¬ 
dow and said: 

“How I’d like to go where the soil is warm and 
moist and lay aside my toggery and lie down in a 
newly opened furrow and roll over in the soil.” 

Instinct; just natural instinct, and I have always 
noticed that the nearer I came to doing that thing 
the sooner I recovered from the winter isolation 
from the soil. 

That’s why I came up on the hill again this spring. 
I didn’t winter well; I was cut off from the soil by 
rubber soles, pavements, concrete, wooden floors. It 
was absolutely necessary that I get back—not nec¬ 
essarily to real farm work but to the soil—and I did 
it. I didn’t disport myself in newly turned furrows, 
but weeding onions, carrots, beets, parsnips—the 
rows three hundred feet long,—with my toes and my 
knees on the soil and one hand resting on the soil 
while I picked the weeds out of the row with the 
other came near enough to it to answer all purposes. 
So my farming has been a success; I feel as strong 
as I did thirty years ago and that wretched attack of 
the “flu” with the relapse and the feeling for days 
that I had got near the end and preached my last 
sermon is almost forgotten; any way it was just an 
incident in life. 

There is room in my barns for more hay; there 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


165 


will be room in my cellars for more vegetables than 
I have raised; the expenses have left room in my 
purse for money that will not come from the sale of 
products enough to fill it; but, with it all, there’s got 
to be room for me in this world for a time longer. 

No; Fm not a successful farmer; but my farming 
this season has been crowned with success. I’ll 
write again. 


Affectionately yours, 



LETTER XXVI 


Dear Friend— 

I feel constrained to write to you this morning, 
and yet I have no report on farming to make; I have 
not, up to the present, made any profits nor have my 
losses been exorbitant; wool is still twenty-five cents 
a pound with no sale for it at that price. I am told 
I can now buy as good a suit as the one I have on 
when it was new, three years ago, for seventy-five 
dollars, but I am not anxious to exchange three hun¬ 
dred pounds of wool for one suit of clothes. I have 
two or three cows ready for the slaughter, and a 
cow’s hide now brings about three dollars and a 
half; I am told I can get a pair of shoes such as I am 
wearing—what there is left of them—for eleven dol¬ 
lars, but I’m not anxious to exchange three hides for 
one pair of shoes for my feet. The explanation of 
the discrepancy between raw and finished products 
is the word “re-adjustment”; that is, I am told that 
we are now in the process of readjustment, which 
means something akin to bankruptcy for me, if I 
have to sell things produced on this year’s costs at 
adjusted prices. But I am not lying awake nights. 
You have heard of the man who was kept awake one 
night into the wee-small hours by a man who was 
pacing back and forth, in the room above him, and 
whose footsteps were heavy. The disturbed man 
finally became desperate and went up to the room 

166 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 167 


above and begged the restless tenant to go to bed 
and to sleep. 

“I can’t” said the excited occupant of the room “I 
have a note for five thousand dollars coming due 
tomorrow noon and I haven’t a dollar with which to 
pay it”. 

“Well, go to bed and go to sleep; it’s the time for 
the holder of the note to be anxious. Go to bed” was 
the irritated man’s reply. 

Whether my creditors have yet got anxious I do 
not know, but as for myself I retire early and sleep 
well. “God bless the man who first invented sleep.” 

But I am going to write you because I have had 
another caller—a boy and he has greatly interested 
me. 

This boy, Ephraim came to me yesterday after¬ 
noon out in the woods and said: 

“Are you going to be at Applehurst this evening?” 

I told him I expected to be, and he expressed a 
wish that he might come up. 

“Come by all means,” I said. 

When Ephraim arrived I was in the kitchen with 
a fire in the cook stove; I had left the fire-place to 
itself all day because my supply of wood was getting 
low, and with the fall plowing not yet finished, Leslie 
is not ready to replenish my woodshed. 

There are two things I can say about that boy, 
Ephraim: First, he is like every other boy I have 
ever known; second, he is unlike any other boy I 
have ever met. Do you understand? 

Ephraim knocked at the back door, and I greeted 
him there. As he came into the kitchen he was a 
picture for an artist. He stood for a moment, cap 


168 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


in hand, his light wavy hair pushed back in a fluffy 
cloud, above a singularly fine forehead; the flush of 
abounding health on his cheeks; his eyes aflame with 
life; a smile quivering about his finely chiseled lips; 
his nostrils dilated as he still breathed quickly and 
deeply because of his swift walk up the hill in the 
storm; a few flakes of damp snow on his shoulders, 
adding a depth to the slight touches of red woven in¬ 
to his heavy mackintosh. He was not wet but just 
damp from head to foot—dampness from the incipi¬ 
ent snow storm that gave the youth an atmosphere 
of freshness, purity, wholesomeness that was inspir¬ 
ing. Our country can never loose its prestige; her 
glory will never fade; the strength of American 
manhood can never wane as long as we can have 
enough youths like him. 

There are two types of youth—the Apollo type, 
and the Hercules type. Ephraim belongs to the 
former; there is no suggestion in his form of great 
physical strength—nothing massive, nor is there the 
promise of ponderous proportions in his future 
development; he is tall and slender in form—per¬ 
haps beyond the average; his finely cut features tell 
of innate tendencies toward the best things. 

“It snows” said Ephraim as the quivering smile I 
have mentioned, broke in to somthing akin to a 
laugh. 

“I see, boy” was my reply, “and it’s a damp snow; 
take off that macintosh and put it here near the 
stove; welcome to the kitchen; it will take too long 
now to get the other room warm from the fireplace.” 

“I like a kitchen” said Ephraim, in approval of 
my choice for the evening. 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 169 


“Another thing” I continued, “you took a long 
walk this afternoon and while this is no time for a 
meal—it’s neither breakfast time, dinner time, nor 
supper time,—Pm hungry, Eph, and Pm quite sure 
you can eat. Here’s a half a loaf of bread; its been 
in this cupboard four days already. With this knife 
I cut off the slices, so” and one slice after another 
separated from the loaf as the knife cleaved its way, 
and the slices fell over on the bread board. 

“These Pm going to toast with this toaster” and I 
adjusted the freshly cut slices of stale bread for the 
process. 

“While the bread is toasting we will get the other 
things ready” I went on, while Ephraim occasionally 
uttered some comment. 

Finally we sat down to the simple repast of but¬ 
tered toast and honey, and the last melon of my 1920 
harvest. 

“Here’s honey, Eph, if you like it,” I said, “help 
yourself.” 

The youth reached out for the box of honey-comb, 
and as he held it in one hand, a silver spoon in the 
other, he paused—paused as though some apparition 
had startled him. 

“My mother loved honey,” he said. 

There was a silence; a silence unbroken save for 
the singing of the tea-kettle on the back of the stove, 
and a blast of wind from the northeast against the 
window. 

Then he repeated the words: “My mother loved 
honey.” 

He turned his face toward mine, a face that now 


170 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


seemed deathly white in the dull lamp-light and 
added: 

“She just loved it and on her birthdays I used to 
go out and buy a little box of it like this—perhaps 
two boxes. Mother said—she used to say she had 
rather have it on her birthday than something that 
cost more money.” 

Then I understood. I understood why he had 
paused and his face had seemed to blanche, and why 
he had spoken in such subdued, tender tones. A 
home—a home with mother in it; a grave in Green¬ 
wood cemetery; but between his early days in the 
home and the opening of the sepulchre, pleasant 
memories, fond recollections to be cherished for a 
lifetime. 

As the anniversary of mother’s birthday ap¬ 
proached the lad had gone into the market to search 
for something that would please her; it must be a 
token of pure affection; it must be an expenditure 
that would meet her approval; it ought to be some¬ 
thing the giving of which would be gladly remem¬ 
bered by the giver. 

There were rubies and opals in the market. Why 
not have a coronet made, set with opals and rubies, 
and place it on mother’s queenly head? No? 

There were diamonds in the market. Why not 
purchase a gold ring, solid and heavy, inlaid with 
diamonds that would flash in her eyes, and place it 
on her finger in the early hours of her anniversary 
day? No? 

There were dress goods of rare and beautiful pat¬ 
terns in the market. Why not select a silver-brocade 
and have a gown fashioned for mother, and let her 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 171 

array herself in it, on the anniversary of her birth? 
No? 

What is sweeter than honey in the honey-comb? 

So the lad purchased a little box of it; then to em¬ 
phasize his love he supplemented it with another box 
like it, and took the offering back from the market to 
home and mother. 

I think the mother’s affection for the boy was as 
sweet as the honey he bought her. I believe the 
boy’s love for his mother was as pure as the contents 
of the honey-comb he placed before her; “mother 
loved honey—-she just loved it and she had rather 
have it than something that cost more money”— 
rubies and opals, gold and diamonds—costly apparel. 

A simple gift—a box of honey in the honey-comb 
—perhaps two boxes of it; but if love can glorify 
anything then the gift was glorified by the boy’s 
love; and if appreciation can sanctify anything then 
the gift was sanctified by the mother’s appreciation. 

A long time ago there was a man; they called him 
the man of Galilee and he is called by that name to 
this day. It came to pass once that a woman 
brought a box of ointment; the box was of alabaster. 
She broke the box and annointed the feet of the 
“Man of Galilee” with the sweet-smelling contents. 
The men who saw it were indignant; they said “Non¬ 
sense ; waste; extravagance!” But the Man of Galilee 
approved it; and the memory of the act, of its les¬ 
sons and its blessed influence, has lived through the 
centuries, and it is still told of the woman that she 
did this thing. And if—But, here, here; I am al¬ 
ready launching out, and this begins to sound like 
preaching while I only intended to write you a 


172 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


friendly letter. I will close here and now, but be¬ 
fore I do it, I must tell you that the boy Ephraim will 
never be the same boy to me that he was up to last 
evening. I had never before had the glimpse of his 
nature and its fineness, of his heart and its tender¬ 
ness until we sat down to our little repast of toast 
and honey. 

After this, whenever I meet the boy, I’m quite 
sure to see not only a boy—a youth of the Apollo 
type—but a little box of honey in the honey-comb, 
“perhaps two boxes.” 

Cordially yours, 




4 


LETTER XXVII 


Dear Friend:— 

Here is more news for you. I have sold my 
sheep; you may not care whether I continue in the 
sheep business or not, but to me, personally, it is in¬ 
teresting. I will tell you about it. 

I was loath to part with them; they always seemed 
so companionable, except “Old Billy,” who had in¬ 
herited a tendency to butt, when there was no call 
for butting. I disposed of him last fall, as you will 
remember. The Sunday papers have just an¬ 
nounced that a man in Boston says that animals 
have souls, and that their souls go to heaven, but he 
never saw “Old 611^^; anyway he did not under¬ 
stand Billy’s traits, or he would not talk in that way. 

My sheep lingered about the house and up in the 
orchard this spring; they would occasionally come to 
the veranda on the north side of the house and at¬ 
tempt to look in at the windows, as if they were 
bursting with curiosity to see what manner of life 1 
was living, and whether I ever dined on roast lamb 
or mutton chops; I could think of no other reason 
why they should be so inquisitive and so regardless 
of the ordinary courtesies of life; but I suppose all 
my neighbors are like sheep; they too, wonder 
whether I am a good housekeeper, and whether, 
when I am alone in the house, I say grace before 
meals, though they do not come onto the veranda to 
look in and see. 


173 


174 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


No; I did not want to part with them, but as the 
season advanced, they developed characteristics 
which made it necessary. I had no pasture for 
them; pasture was rented of a neighbor last year, 
but the neighbor sold his farm and I must needs 
make some other arrangement. 

One Sunday morning I went into a big temple of 
worship in a great city, and was among the first to 
arrive. I took a front seat in the first balcony and 
could see the entire auditorium. A woman entered 
and started up the central aisle; as she did so, there 
was a great array of vacant seats—all to be filled 
with worshippers within twenty minutes, but vacant 
just then. She had her choice of all of them. If 
there had been but three sittings, she would have 
been satisfied with any one of them; but with so many 
to select from, she was hard to please. She looked 
about for a moment, went to within a few row^s of 
the rostrum and stood for a moment at one of the 
seats; then she saw a location two rows nearer the 
minister which she seemed to think was a little more 
desirable and she moved into it; but before seating 
herself, she looked diagonally across and saw a still 
better location and this she finally occupied. She 
was like sheep—we all are. My flock found it hard 
to decide just where to eat, where to spend the night, 
where to lie down in the middle of the day. Feed 
was abundant because they had the run of the lawn, 
the orchard, the new piece of clover west of the road, 
where I got a splendid “catch” last fall. The sweet¬ 
est grass, tender red-clover leaves and the choicest 
of alsike would ordinarily be good enough and en¬ 
tirely satisfactory to them; but they stripped half a 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 175 


dozen four-year-old red-pine transplants of all their 
foliage; they ignored the sumac up in the wild hedge 
near the poultry house and peeled the bark off a few 
sumacs which I had transplanted from the wild 
hedge into a bed of shrubbery; they nipped the larg¬ 
est sprouts of my little bed of irises which I watched 
all last summer and which were to blossom this 
year; they looked with covetous eyes on the six plants 
of digitalis gloxinioides I had just received from the 
florist and carefully planted, and blighted my hopes 
of seeing delphinium formosom bloom this year, and 
made a ruinous attack on the delphinium grandi- 
florum, all of which I had received from the same 
dealer in beautiful and more or less expensive plants 
for summer flowering. 

So I called up a man who lives six or eight miles 
away and who thought he would buy my flock; he 
said he would come up on Thursday afternoon and 
look over these wool-bearing creatures and make me 
an offer. He was coming Thursday. Wednesday 
afternoon I went to the barn; there were six mothers 
there, each with her own beautiful lamb, a source of 
constant anxiety to her. It was a beautiful sight, 
the six lambs, the six mothers; and they all cast 
friendly glances at me as I stood and guessed at the 
price the dealer would determine upon the next day. 
This visit was sad, too sad to be prolonged and I left 
the barn. To stay very long would be to relent and 
to decide I would keep the entire flock after all. 

On my way to the house I sat down at the rock 
garden. Six lambs born a year ago and therefore 
“yearlings” came over in a friendly way from the 
orchard to ask what I was thinking about, and with 


176 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


the six yearlings was one mother with a lambkin not 
yet two weeks old. It was an ideal day in early 
May; the mountains over in Franklin County never 
seemed quite so blue; the foliage of poplar and maple 
and wild cherry was amazingly beautiful in the sun¬ 
light; the sky had taken on the soft tints of June and 
the leaden clouds here and there, all except their 
bases, were glorified by the sun’s rays. It was a 
scene for a painter—the six yearlings, the one moth¬ 
er with her lambkin, the gray rocks of the garden, 
the orchard for a background. 

The lambkin got on a rock and looked over the 
great field of green grass, each blade of which was 
as sweet and tender as the blades he had been 
nipping. 

“I don’t believe I can eat all this,” he said, as he 
surveyed what to him must have been a vast expanse 
of succulence. 

It was related somewhere that when Daniel Web¬ 
ster was nearing the end of his life he had his herd 
at Marshfield driven into the field where he could 
look from the window and see the beautiful animals 
he prized so highly, and exclaimed as he gazed at 
them: 

“These are the things that make it hard to die!” 

I know not whether there be any basis for the 
anecdote, but I do know, that while I am not a Daniel 
Webster, and so far as I know, I am not in my clos¬ 
ing moments of life, I said in my heart, as I watched 
the fleeced creatures and the lambkin and thought of 
the others in the barn: 

“A scene like this makes it hard to take the price 
the dealer will offer me tomorrow.” 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 177 


But on the morrow, the buyer failed to keep his 
appointment and later notified me that he would 
come at dusk Monday evening. And in the mean¬ 
time, something happened, that as you will see, was 
well calculated to make the selling of these ninnies— 
the parting with them for money—still more diffi¬ 
cult. I used the word “ninny” carefully and cor¬ 
rectly. “Ninny” is not slang, nor is it as modern as 
you may think. Like many of our most dignified 
words—“geography,” “geology,” “telephone,” “tele¬ 
graph,” “biography” and a host of others—it is of 
Greek origin. The Greek word is “ninos” which 
means a foolish or silly person. Is there anything 
more silly than a sheep? 

I do not believe these sheep were really willing to 
leave this hill; they were kindly treated; they had 
the run of the orchard, the lawn, the flower garden, 
and there was nothing to keep them out of the vege¬ 
table garden as soon as the peas were up. On Mon¬ 
day evening the buyer was to come at dusk. 

Monday afternoon I was sitting on the verandah, 
resting from a fit of spading and meditating on the 
limitations of a spinal column that has been in use 
almost sixty-eight years. The little barn, where the 
flock spends most of the nights, is near the end of the 
semi-circular driveway from Applehurst to Clover- 
Slope. I chanced to look toward the barn just in 
time to see one of these sheep come around the cor¬ 
ner as a bare-back rider appears in the ring at the 
circus, or the leader in a pageant advances before a 
crowd of spectators. This sheep started alone, 
slowly and with queenly dignity to follow the circu¬ 
lar driveway; she had moved about forty feet, when 


178 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


ninny “Number Two/’ appeared—just as though she 
were another horse with bare-back rider at the 
circus, or representing some royal personage in the 
pageant, and, with the same attempt at dignity and 
queenly bearing, followed “Number One.” 

I had never seen sheep act in this way before and 
I was at once curious and amused. When “Number 
Two” had got about forty feet from the corner of the 
barn, ninny “Number Three” appeared just behind 
the corner, and moved along with the same sheepish 
grace and air of importance that the other two had 
exhibited—neither one of them looked to right nor to 
the left; each acted as though she realized that she 
was part of a most impressive calvacade and was 
determined to add to its impressiveness. 

These three gray-eyed ruminants were keeping 
their places and moving along as though keeping 
step to music, when ninny “Number Four” appeared 
from around the corner, direct in line with the others 
and about forty feet behind “Number Three” and, 
looking neither to right nor left, proceeded over the 
regular route for the parade. 

It was an impressive sight. 

I did not know that sheep could assume such a 
pompous attitude. I was wondering whether the 
others would follow, until the entire flock was in a 
pageant intended to impress me with the folly of 
parting with these creatures, when, instead of a 
sheep, the lambkin, with its wee little head and ears 
and with legs as big as its mother’s appeared forty 
feet behind, wiggling its diminutive tail and making 
grotesque attempts at gamboling quite out of keep¬ 
ing with the otherwise pompous parade. 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


179 


It appeared as though the lambkin had been intro¬ 
duced as a special feature, its white fleece and 
clumsy movements being in striking contrast with 
the gray, gummy fleeces of the other paraders. One 
more ninny appeared, in order and on time, around 
the corner and then followed the rest of the sheep 
and lambs with no semblance of order, like the crowd 
of rude boys that usually tags a parade of any kind. 

It seemed to be a concerted attempt to show off and 
make me relent and decide to keep this flock—moth¬ 
ers, yearlings, lambs and the lambkin. 

Monday evening Ralph and I were talking about 
the flock—Ralph lives at Clover-Slope and does 
many things for me which require time and patience, 
like setting hens, milking and other chores which 
must be done promptly or not at all. It was just 
dark and I had explained to Ralph that the buyer 
had twice agreed to come and see my sheep, twice 
he had failed to do so, and I was saying what I 
would do with the precious merinos, when there was 
a sound of wheels and the regular pacing of horses’ 
hoofs in front of the house. 

“He has come; here he is now,” said Ralph, and 
we exchanged greetings with the possible purchaser. 

A lantern was lighted and we went to the sheep 
barn. Of course the sheep all crowded into a cor¬ 
ner; the buyer held the lantern over them and 
scanned them with experienced eyes; he laid his 
hand on the rump of two or three of them. 

“They seem to be in pretty good condition,” he 
said, apparently trying to convince himself that there 
was a chance to drive a bargain and make a dollar. 

“They ought to be,” I replied, audibly, and men- 


180 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


tally added “they’ve had their pick of clover, grass, 
peony sprouts, imported iris, delphinium grandi- 
florum, delphinium formosum, sumac, digitalis glox- 
inioides, not to mention oats and other grains; 
they’ve had the run of the orchard, the north veran¬ 
dah and the rock garden; they’ve daily drank the 
water out of the bird-path, persistently and consist¬ 
ently preferring it to the water provided for them. 
They have been liberally provided for and ought to 
be fit for market.” 

The prospective buyer lowered the lantern, which 
he had been holding over them; leaned against the 
partition a moment and said: 

“What do you want for them?” 

What did I want for them? I wanted about one 
hundred and forty dollars each; were they not my 
sheep, and was not sentiment worth something in a 
case like this? 

It was a cold-blooded, unfeeling question; the man 
was making no distinction between the flock that 
had been hovering around Applehurst these spring 
days and ordinary sheep. It was clear to me that he 
saw no difference between these objects of my atten¬ 
tion and any of the five hundred other sheep he told 
me he had driven to the slaughter this year. 

“I’m not a dickerer,” I said meekly; “You may 
tell me what you will give—the most you can give— 
and I’ll tell you quickly whether or not I’ll take it. 
I’m not as anxious to sell as I was, anyway.” 

He named the price and I said: 

“When will you come for them?” 

“Day after tomorrow at one o’clock.” 

So a man came; he placed a roll of bills in my 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 181 


hand and went away with the sheep, leaving the 
lambkin and three other lambs. One of these I gave 
to a little granddaughter, one to a neighbor’s little 
girl and transferred the other to be taken care of for 
a time. 

Nowhere on the hill is there a sheep today. The 
solicitous mothers have gone; the yearlings have dis¬ 
appeared and I shall see no more their wooly pates 
as they look into my window or visit the flower gar¬ 
den ; the lambs have vanished—even the lambkin has 
gambolled his last gambol at Applehurst. 

It is not, however an absolutely hopeless case; I 
still have interests here. Two Plymouth Rock bid¬ 
dies are sitting on hens’ eggs; one is brooding over 
a setting of duck’s eggs; another is devoting all her 
time to incubating thirteen guinea hens’ eggs; and 
two Rhode Island Reds are dreaming of the day 
when twenty-six pheasants’ eggs will burst and lib¬ 
erate the life that is in them. 

Sincerely yours, 



LETTER XXVIII 


Dear Friend Leavens— 

A few days ago I chanced to look out of my win¬ 
dow and saw a wood chuck coming directly across 
the lawn as though he belonged here; he was not 
more than fifty feet from the corner of the house. 

“No, Chucky,” I said, “you are not needed here; 
your presence is not favorable to the development 
of flower gardens, green peas and beet greens. HI 
ask you to retrace your steps to the pasture where 
you belong.” 

Saying this I went out through the back door, and 
around the corner of the house, expecting to meet 
her. She was not visible. I thrust aside the thick 
branches of lilacs and peered into the dark foliage 
thinking she must be in hiding; she could not be seen 
anywhere. I was just abandoning my search when 
twenty feet from me I saw her watching me as she 
stood, partly concealed, behind the trunk of one of 
the pine trees. 

“Ah, ha”, I exclaimed “I can go around that pine 
tree fast enough to get a fair chance at you,” and 
just then Mrs. Chucky vanished and the place was as 
though she had not been. Not until I investigated 
did I learn that she had dug a hole under the pine 
tree and intended to spend the summer there. Her 
presence a few feet from my flowers is not necessary 
for my happiness. 


182 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 183 


Two days later, a boy was washing paint for me in 
the back hall on the second floor. 

“Hist”, he said in a whisper, “Go lightly; go light¬ 
ly. Come here and I will show you somethingand 
he was looking out of the window. I followed in¬ 
structions. Mrs. Chucky had moved. She was close 
to the cellar door and without the slightest concern, 
as to her safety, was> feasting on yarrow leave in 
preference to clover, dandelions or any other vegeta¬ 
tion. We rapped on the window pane; we opened 
the window and talked to her and she seemed to 
think all we said was complimentary and in the na¬ 
ture of a welcome. When, at last, we startled her 
she disappeared through the rollway into the cellar. 
So far as I know she intends to share this house with 
me; she is in the cellar now. How do I know she 
will not be upstairs under my bed when I retire to¬ 
morrow night? 

When I went out to water the delphiniums, and 
digitalis which I set out yesterday—a half dozen 
roots of each of three varieties having arrived from 
the dealer—I was surprised to find that a phoebe is 
building her nest under the roof of the front porch. 
Mrs. Phoebe seemed to be as much surprised at my 
presence as I was to discover her nest; but she ex¬ 
plained confidentially,—I am betraying a confidence, 
I think—that she hoped to complete the nest with 
Mr. Phoebe’s help, and raise her little brood and 
have the phoeblings ready to fly before the family 
of human kids due here from New Jersey in a few 
weeks arrives; at least I assume that this is what she 
said; whatever it was, she said it all in a subdued 
plaintive tone which I could not resist. You see, sir, 


184 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


I am not one of the class of landlords so much dis¬ 
cussed in the papers at the present time, and if any 
of my tenants wish their offspring to grow up on my 
premises, I shall not say “Nay” to them. 

Later 

At sunset, May 21, the phoebe was on her nest un¬ 
der the front porch quietly incubating; the small 
bluebird was busy, as he had been all the afternoon, 
carrying morsels of food to the bird-house in the 
Balm of Gilead tree, presumably for his mate though 
from the large quantities of food stuff he has trans¬ 
ported today it may be that the house is full of young 
birds; a pair of martins had come up from the 
colony down at Good Will, nearer the Kennebec than 
this hill top, and was trying to convince the wood- 
swallows whose young must be nearly ready to fly 
that it was their duty to vacate the premises at once 
and turn the tenement over to said martins; the 
woodchuck near the pine tree and just across the 
lane from the flower garden was reminded in some 
way of the extra bunch of pine needles needed in her 
burrough, or I judge so because she suddenly gath¬ 
ered up a bunch of them and disappeared into the 
earth; just then oh, the wonder of it—a catbird be¬ 
gan its evening song in the lilac bush under the 
Balm of Gilead and a whippoorwill tuned up in the 
thicket across the road. No catbird had sung so 
near the house since I have been here; and the whip¬ 
poorwill was an eighth of a mile nearer than I had 
known him to come before. Just then a big cat 
came prowling up the lane—an immense creature 
bent on carnage. Alas! The things I would have 



LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


185 


with me—merino sheep, horses, and pheasant go 
from me; the things I would not have—woodchucks, 
cats and whatnot come to me and remain! 

I have had the following notices posted at Good 
Will, and have offered Ralph a reward up here: 

Notice 

“This is the season when young birds are leaving 
their nests and not being able to fly but a short dis¬ 
tance, remain on the ground and are killed by cats. 
Several cats are prowling about and doing much 
mischief. I hereby offer $1.00 reward for any stray 
cat shot or chloroformed on Good Will Farm; and 
any cat belonging at Good Will may be taken in the 
same way if found prowling more than two hundred 
feet from the cottage where it is claimed. This offer 
expires July 15, 1921.” 

Later 

I have discovered a spirit of unrest and dissatis¬ 
faction in the poultry yard; this is an unfortunate 
condition but I might have known it was inevitable 
had I given any thought to it. A Plymouth Rock, 
after sitting on some eggs for about four weeks, 
hatched out a brood which she declares has not a 
drop of Plymouth Rock blood in its veins; the web- 
footed broad-billed prodigies have grown beyond all 
reason, she declares, and at even this early period 
she is unable to cover them with her feathers at 
night as they should be covered. Her constant 
squaking about the imposition which she lays at my 
door has made itself felt among the other fowls. A 
Rhode Island Red in the next coop is equally dis- 


186 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


gruntled because, after weeks of brooding, she has 
only a few brittle-boned chicks, bearing little resem¬ 
blance to the beautiful brood she has dreamed of 
through the long days and nights of incubation. 

“They’re pheasants” she declared petulently; “just 
ring-necks, and are bound to desert me and put for 
the wild woods before they’re half grown.” 

Between the two coops is another biddy, demure, 
hopeful but more or less restless. She already sus¬ 
pects that the guinea-hen eggs under her warm 
breast are anything but Plymouth Rock in origin. 

“Day after tomorrow’s the day I come off” she 
exclaimed, impatiently; “how do I know whether, 
when the time comes, I’ll find my nest full of web¬ 
footed fluffs, field-mice or butterflies.” 

“Oh, law,” she continued in undisguised scorn, 
“what impositions!” 

And the more I think of it, the more inclined I am 
to believe that there is ground for the disconcerted 
spirit among the fowls. 

All this is across the semi-circle at Clover-Slope 
but there’s an equally disconcerting mix-up of aliens 
at Applehurst. When the Porters arrived they had 
a harrowing tale of various episodes on their jour¬ 
ney, all because they were determined to bring a 
pair of rabbits with them. These bunnies are gray 
and white, spotted, with black eyes; they are plebians 
at best, without one trace of aristocracy about them. 
They made the journey in a basket; they were not 
allowed to travel as personal baggage and had to go 
on the Fall River boat as express; the railroad offi¬ 
cials were equally finicky and refused to check them; 
they were not clothing nor—well, they were not per- 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


187 


sonal baggage at all. They were responsible for 
many anxious moments on the wharf and at the 
railroad station; they caused some vexatious delays 
of the entire party and to said delays and vexations 
should be added $1.50 in cash for fees and the like; 
but they are here—the two and they are loose on the 
premises. 

One of the lambs that I disposed of a few weens 
ago is back here for the summer; he inherits various 
tendencies from “Old Billy” and what is before us 
’twixt now and September no one can predict. A 
Belgian Police pup, a few weeks old, has come to 

share the place with the four lineal descendants of 

- 

your humble servant. Lambkin, puppy, woodchucks, 
rabbits! 

As Aunt Sophia Taft would say: “Mercy on us; 
what next?” 


Cordially yours, 



LETTER XXIX 


Dear Friend— 

Now that we are approaching the holidays I am 
wondering if I ever told you the experience I had a 
year ago; I do not think I did and so I will record it 
here for your perusal. 

It was the Christmas season; for two weeks we 
had been in it; the sounds of it, the joy of it and the 
spirit of it had been growing. 

In an address before the Colby students—students 
who had arranged Christmas service before going 
away for the holidays—I had said: 

“We are on the threshold of the Christmas season; 
we already feel it and know it. The Christmas 
spirit is increasing; it will continue to grow until 
December 25th; then it will suddenly subside—un¬ 
fortunately but inevitably—to be revived again, 
however, twelve months hence.” 

And after the body of that address had been given 
I closed with the words: 

“Let us enter into it with all our heart; let us 
greet our fellows with good cheer as we pass on the 
street; let us send greetings of good will and receive 
them, each doing a part in the rising tide of Christ¬ 
mas cheer and merriment.” 

I had responded fairly well to my own exhortation 
in the days that followed; the exchange of gifts be¬ 
tween members of my family had been witnessed 
and enjoyed; messages of Christmas cheer had been 

188 



LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


189 


received and sent—packages, letters, cards, tele¬ 
grams. I had gone my regular annual rounds of 
the Christmas-tree in the cottages at Good Will—in 
fact I had taken Santa Claus in my own auto, as he 
seemed to be without reindeer, horses or other means 
of progress—and had entered each cottage just after 
Santa Claus had paid a visit to it and departed 
through the back door and in each place I had been 
told that Santa had been there, but had just left; yes, 
in each cottage, in presence of the young people, I 
had sighed, expressed my impatience and disappoint¬ 
ment and the hope that I might yet overtake him be¬ 
fore he left the community. 

In my home we had gathered around a little tree 
loaded with Christmas things, and had announced 
the person for which each gift, large or small, was 
intended; the expressions of pleasure on the part of 
those of mature years, the shouts of delight and mer¬ 
riment from the little ones had all been good for a 
heart that was, perchance, beginning to feel the chill 
of age. I was sixty-seven years old at that time— 
sixty-seven, and going on sixty-eight; three score 
years and ten was not far distant at best. 

In the chapel at Good Will, I had preached a 
Christmas sermon, announced Christmas hymns and 
offered prayer of thanksgiving for Christmas time 
and all it signifies. My house at Willow-Wood had 
been kept open until midnight to welcome the thirty 
singers, who, returning from their rounds, with 
Christmas carols, would be grateful for sandwiches 
and hot cocoa and music in doors—this too, was 
good for a heart beginning to feel the chill of age— 
sixty-seven and going on sixty-eight. 


190 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


On the brow of the hill, a mile away, as the crow 
flies, was Applehurst; the white house with its 
bottle-green blinds and snow-laden roof stood grim 
and cheerless in the frost; it was cold and silent 
within; it was silent and cold without. Once, a day 
or two before Christmas as I had a waking vision of 
the place and recalled winter scenes within its paint¬ 
ed walls, I said: 

“This would be a great time to be at Applehurst; 
I’ve half a mind to go up and start a fire on the 
hearth,” but no one of my family, to whom the re¬ 
mark was addressed, said: “Go, by all means, fath¬ 
er,” and so I had deferred the little warming-up till 
after Christmas; the lock in the north door, where I 
always enter Applehurst in winter, remained un¬ 
touched. 

And now Christmas was over—past and gone; the 
commonplace prediction in the Colby College address 
was being fulfilled—the spirit had reached its apogee 
and was receding; and it was getting very cold. The 
night that Santa Claus went his rounds and theoreti¬ 
cally I was trying to overtake him, he remarked up¬ 
on the temperature of his body every time he got into 
the auto to ride to the next place: 

“Gee, but this is hot!” he would say; “I didn’t 
know just how much clothing to put on.” 

And at the next place: 

“Whew! I never sweat so in my life! It can’t be a 
very cold night anyway, but you see this toggery is 
warm—it surely is!” 

But since that the temperature had dropped—the 
thermometer going down with it—and Marten 
Stream, which flows so silently into the Kennebec 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


191 


not far from Willow-Wood, and a mile, as the crow 
flies, from Applehurst, was frozen over for the first 
time that winter. Everybody was hoping that the 
announcement would go out from the Good Will 
office that the ice on Marten Stream was safe and 
skating in order, though the Kennebec was still, a 
part of the way, as open as in summer time. And 
then, three days after Christmas, the mercury reg¬ 
istered twenty below. Glorious! The blood in the 
veins of every boy quickened its flow; skates were 
gotten out and sharpened; everybody was waiting 
for the word “Go to Marten.” 

Of all this I was in unfortunate ignorance; I do 
not mean I was ignorant of the drop in temperature, 
but I did not understand—or had failed to compre¬ 
hends—that the first skating of the winter was 
imminent. 

It was too cold to warm Applehurst for a party; 
but a blaze could be kindled in the Franklin fireplace, 
in the little chamber over the kitchen; the room was 
big enough for two to be happily by themselves, or 
four or six could find comfortable sitting and much 
good cheer in the somewhat limited space. 

The latter possibility appealed to me strongly—a 
party of six with red apples, corn-popping, marsh¬ 
mallow roast, games, sociability; but just then I met 
“Fat”. “Fat” is a boy of social qualifications; he 
fits into a crowd or a select party, or he can be an 
agreeable solitary guest. 

When I saw “Fat” sitting in the boiler-room in the 
Buckminster at Good Will, his round face moist with 
perspiration, after a fit of vigorous feeding of the 
furnace and coated unevenly with coal-dust, various 


192 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


possibilities for the evening crystalized into one 
definite plan. 

‘‘What are you going to do this evening, “Fat?” 1 
queried, after the greetings of the fast vanishing 
Christmas season. 

“Don’t know,” responded “Fat” his white teeth in 
amusing contrast to his coal-dusted chin; “not any¬ 
thing, I guess.” 

“You haven’t any plan for the evening, and there’s 
nothing going on—sure?” I asked. 

“Nothing that I know about” said “Fat,” and the 
whites of his eyes shone like polished porcelain, un¬ 
der eyebrows made doubly heavy and black with the 
dust from the coal-shovel. 

“How would it do for you and me to take supper 
at Applehurst at six o’clock, and breakfast there to¬ 
morrow morning—baked potatoes, fried bacon, buck¬ 
wheat cakes, cabbage salad, crabapple jelly, buttered 
toast, Ceylon tea, sardines, lamb chops, Baldwin 
apples, roasted marshmallows, Christmas chocolate, 
hey?” ; j j 

“That would be fine,” ejaculated “Fat,” as he gave 
another unconscious exhibition of shining teeth and 
eyes in a coal-black setting, “fine.” 

“Would you really like to come?” I queried. 

“Pd be very glad to come,” said “Fat.” 

“Very well; I’ll be delighted to have you. Please 
arrive at Applehurst at just six; we’ll eat at six- 
thirty.” 

It was one-thirty when “Fat” and I made the com¬ 
pact; a walk over the Bowdoin Trail from Good Will 
to Applehurst was good for any man that day over 
the crisp, glistening snow, under the low-hanging 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


193 


branches of fir and hemlock—branches loaded with 
the same crystal white from heaven that crested the 
roofs of buildings, crowned the chimney-tops and 
squeaked under each foot-step, but especially invigo¬ 
rating for a man sixty-seven, going on sixty-eight, 
and three score years and ten not far distant. 

I had opened Applehurst; the kitchen stove was 
red with heat, fairly good progress had been made 
toward the supper which was to be at six-thirty; a 
fire in the “Franklin” had sent a genial warmth to 
every corner and cranny in the little chamber; lamps 
had been trimmed, their chimneys cleaned, and there 
were some appetizing odors in the atmosphere, when 
the telephone rang 257-11, at just half past five 
o’clock. I answered the call. 

“The fact is,” said Assistant Supervisor N. H. 
Hinckley, “there will be skating tonight—the first of 
the season on Marten. ‘Fat’ wants to skate; he says 
that, if you would like to have him, he will come up 
at eight-forty-five or nine; will it be all right?” 

“All right for him to skate,” I said. 

“Shall he come at eight-forty-five or nine?” 
queried the Assistant Supervisor. 

“No, not under any circumstances—no indeed.” 

Putting up the receiver, I said, and said it aloud— 
the first human voice heard in the silent old house 
for a number of days: 

“All right, and all wrong; all right for ‘Fat’ to 
prefer skating with a crowd of his own age, to 
spending the hours up here in a little room warmed 
with a stove, and in company of a man sixty-seven— 
going on sixty-eight, and three score and ten not far 
distant; but all wrong, when he has accepted the in- 


194 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


vitation, had said he would be glad to come. “Fat” 
knows Pm sensitive; he knows that I don’t expect 
young folk to prefer my company to that of their 
comrades; he knows that I often hesitate to ask fel¬ 
lows like him to accompany me anywhere for pleas¬ 
ure, because I have no right to assume that Seven¬ 
teen years’ prefers ‘sixty-seven’ years for comrade¬ 
ship. Pm through; it is fine to be through—to 
know that one has done well his part along any line 
of service. Forty-four years ago I began opening 
my room to young people ; this custom was begun in 
the school-teaching days in Kingston; it was kept up 
through the years of my pastorates—the boys were 
always welcome; through more than thirty years I 
have given the young at Good Will first place in all 
my thoughts—my summer outings have been subject 
to their wishes; my winter days off have looked to 
them for comradeship; all these years it has been 
evident that there would be a lonely old age for me 
if I live to reach it, and three score and ten is not 
now far distant. I have known that the time would 
come when the young would not understand; youtn 
would forget and the chasm between my years and 
the High School age would become so wide that it 
could no longer be crossed, the chasm has reached 
that depth; it has expanded to the fatal width; ‘Fat’ 
has proved it to me. It interests me to know, here 
and now, that I have extended my last invitation to 
youth; hereafter the young will come and go—the 
young will think of me as one they used to see occa¬ 
sionally walking across Good Will Farm alone; the 
newly come will take a look at me, as Pm pointed 
out as the old man of the place; it will be understood 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


195 


that when this old man was younger he used to 
choose the young for comradeship; that the hike, the 
fishing trip, the camps, the open fires in winter at 
Applehurst, in the Bungalow, at Willow-Wood were 
many; then as he passed Christmas, of his sixty 
seventh year—going on sixty-eight—he suddenly 
stopped it all. They will never know; but I can 
never forget that ‘Fat’ showed me that the time had 
come for the change. Henceforth Pm to be a mem¬ 
ory in the hearts of a few for a little time—only a 
memory. Pm glad Pm through.” 

I was not particularly happy though I tried to per¬ 
suade myself that I was. Closing the damper in the 
kitchen stove, and carefully undoing all the prepara¬ 
tions I had made for my prospective guest, I locked 
the north door, put out the lower lights and went up¬ 
stairs. It was my plan to devote the evening to the 
little library I had collected and arranged on a small 
shelf in the cozy little room over the kitchen. Above 
the mirror that hangs between the two north win¬ 
dows was my gun—the firearm which I used on my 
last hunting trip; opposite the gun and over the door 
were my skates placed there for all time, a silent re¬ 
minder of younger days; against the wall nearby 
was my set of golf sticks, souvenir of days passed 
and gone; and finally, over the lounge in the alcove, 
against the brown wall paper stood out in hard re¬ 
lief my snow shoes telling the story of former years 
—the years when muscles were hard and the white 
hills inviting on frosty nights. 

Into this room I went and closed the door; draw¬ 
ing the easy chair between the fire and the shelves of 


196 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


books I gave myself up to a proposed evening of lit¬ 
erary pleasure. 

My eyes first rested on a volume bound in dark 
blue; it was Dillon Wallace’s “Long Labrador Trail.” 
I rook it from its place and turned to the first page; 
the author’s autograph was there and words of 
greeting and friendship. But I would not have time 
to re-read the book, so I turned to the best chapter 
and began reading. My mind wandered. What if, 
instead of looking to the young for comradeship I 
had devoted my leisure to such men as Wallace—God 
bless him—I would not now be as lonely as I am; 
and “Fat” knew better than to do as he did—he 
surely knew it was a breach of good manners, but 
never mind. And the book went back to its place on 
the shelf. 

The “Moose Book” was near it, a portly volume 
once read from cover to cover with pleasure and 
profit; now I looked at the pictures which were fine, 
scanned the table of contents which seemed complete, 
but found neither profit nor pleasure; and “Fat” 
should be taught that an invitation to supper ought 
not to be accepted and then unfeelingly cast aside. 

How often I had consulted that volume which is 
known in my Applehurst library as the “Pet-Book” 
—the book that tells of dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea- 
pigs, rats, mice, reptiles, batrachians, fishes, pigeons, 
bantams, pheasants, guinea-fowl, doves, hawks, and 
owls; perhaps it would yield me solace; at least it 
might prove once more to be of passing interest. I 
opened it at random, and read on the second page, 
opposite some excellent pictures of Belgian hares: 

“As the Belgian Hare is now by far the most pop- 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


197 


ular breed, both in this country and in England, it 
may be considered first. It has, of course” no con¬ 
nection with “Fat” who might, at least have notified 
me earlier in the afternoon, that he preferred skat¬ 
ing with his schoolmates to a hollow evening alone 
with me at Applehurst, and— 

It was no use; why try to read natural history, 
when science and sentiment were so mixed in my 
thoughts. The “Pet Book” had a pathetic, discard¬ 
ed appearance, as, in its dull brown cover, it found 
its place again on the shelf. 

But Mills’ “Beaver World” had not been consulted 
in a long time; it would be as fresh as though I had 
never seen it. Out came the gray covered book; it 
had been a gift to me on Lake George, New York, 
in 1916, and had beautiful associations. After look¬ 
ing at the inscription of friendship on the first page, 
I let the book open where it would, and believing 
that one place would be as interesting as another, I 
began on the forty-fifth: 

“Extensive autumn rambles in the mountains 
with especial attention to beaver customs compel me 
to conclude that as a basis for weather predictions 
beaverdom is not reliable. In the course of one 
autumn month in the mountains of Colorado”— 
“Fat” accepted an invitation after he had told me 
that he had nothing to do, and then, after prepara¬ 
tions were well under way for the meal, he asked 
if he could go skating instead. Nonsense! where, 
when and how had natural history lost its charm? 
When and where did poor “Fat” get mixed up with 
moose, beavers, Belgian hares and what-not? 

I acted leisurely. The evening was passing: there 


198 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


was no mistake about that, and it was not yielding 
much of interest or happiness. The Christmas tide 
was receding as the sea would if an earthquake 
should open and let all the water into the bowels of 
the earth. Science was failing me, but multitudes 
have found solace in poetry. I would discard nature 
and science; poetry should take my mind off the fact 
that “Fat” had led me to cut loose from the comrade¬ 
ship of youth forever and forever and forever. 

Out from among my library treasures came a 
green covered “Anthology of Garden and Nature 
Poems”—a strictly modern, up-to-date book of poe¬ 
try, and surely it would speak to me. It did. The 
first poem I saw began: 

“When I looked into your eyes I saw a garden 
With peonies and twinkling pogodas, 

And round-arched bridges—” 

and “Fat” sitting in the boiler-room, with his black 
face and glistening ivories, smiling and assuring 
me that he would be glad to spend the evening with 
“sixty-seven,” going on sixty-eight, and three score 
and ten not far distant. 

It seemed to me as though the room was anything 
but cheerful; the green shade on the heavy bronze 
lamp appeared to be unnecessarily thick and sombre; 
I did not like it and it was promptly taken off and 
put on a shelf in the corner of the room; even then 
the room was anything but cheerful—I had never 
realized before what a somber brown shade of paper 
I had selected for it the preceding summer. If I had 
known! 

But I was not going to give up nor be defeated. I 
had abandoned the companionship of youth—that 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 199 


was settled; I was to get my enjoyment in some other 
way than keeping in touch—or trying to—with 
young minds so fickle that one knows not at one- 
thirty what he will want to do at six-thirty of the 
same afternoon. I turned the pages of the anthology 
aimlessly. Ah ha! Here was something that looked 
attractive; I would pause and read: I did: 

“I will be the gladdesit thing 

Under the sun; 

I will touch a hundred flowers 

And not pick one; 

I will look at the cliff and clouds—” 

and see “Fat” tipping back in his chair, both hands 
pressing against the back-side of his head as he sol¬ 
emnly lies to me; telling me that he enjoys my com¬ 
pany, when, as a matter of fact, no one at seventeen 
cares a rap for sixty-seven, unless it’s a parent or a 
grandparent. 

The Christmas tide was about out; but it was all I 
could expect. I had not kept up with modern poe¬ 
try; if there was companionship for me among the 
poets it would be found with those of a former gen¬ 
eration ; modern poetry did not seem to have arrest¬ 
ing power—it could not stop the melancholy medita¬ 
tion upon the sudden change that had come into my 
life, nor even the unconscious cause of it—the boy 
who at that moment was gliding over Marten Stream 
under the Christmas moon. 

I would go back to the literary favorites of my 
own youth, for once I was only seventeen; surely 
Fitz Greene Halleck’s “Marco Bozarris,” which I, in 
common with all school boys in those days, had de¬ 
claimed, would warm my heart. Strange to relate, 


200 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


the book was destined to be of only momentary in¬ 
terest. I read: 

“At midnight in his guarded tent, 

The Turk was dreaming of the hour—” 

when “Fat” might have said to the other fellows— 
the boys and girls of his own age—“Fd like to skate, 
but I have an engagement at six o’clock sharp, and I 
must not miss it.” He would have done that, were 
his appointment with some one of his own age—male 
or female—but sixty-seven, going on sixty-eight, can 
be turned down at a moment’s notice. But I’m glad 
he did it. Pm through. 

With Halleck back on the shelf, there was small 
choice; two small volumes of poems remained, but 
happily they were both reliable; I could not doubt 
their value, or their power to get me out of myself, 
to gently lead my soul away from the grim determi¬ 
nation that possessed it; not that I would ever 
change, but so long as the purpose had been formed 
to ignore youth the rest of my life, why could not I 
go on happily in my path. 

“Listen, my children,” 

I read, as I opened the volume of Longfellow’s poems, 

“Listen, my children, and you shall hear, 

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, 

On the 18th of April, in ’75, 

Hardly a man is now alive 

Who remembers that famous day and year”— 

“Fat” said to his friend that he would be at Apple- 

hurst at six o’clock- 

Perhaps Whittier—dear old Whittier—could in¬ 
spire me with pleasant thoughts. I turned instinct¬ 
ively to “The Bare-foot Boy” and read: 



LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 201 


“Blessings on thee, little man,” bare- 

foot—“Fat”, you upset my plan for this evening in 
fine shape, and I would not mind that at all, only, it 
happens that you 'have brought about a sudden 
transition in my life. You’ll understand perhaps, 
sometime, that you and I never go anywhere togeth¬ 
er again—fishing, hiking, camping—but you’ll never 
know why. And some of the boys will understand 
that I no longer do as I’ve been doing, but I’m glad 
you’ve done it, only I wish—I wish you had put off 
your dastardly act ten or a dozen years. For the life 
of me I don’t know how I can live as long as I want 
to, cut off from the friendship of the young, and de¬ 
barred from the experiences that have given zest to 
my living. 

It was at this- juncture that I put the poetical vol¬ 
umes back on the shelf and turned to fiction. 
“Christmas is past,” I said, in my heart, “but the 
spirit of Christmas still lingers—lingers everywhere 
so far as I know, except in this little room full of 
gloom and resentment. It’s not too late to read one 
of Murray’s ‘Holiday Tales,’ and I’ll do it. But a 
glance at the timepiece showed that the evening was 
far spent; it was already ten-thirty, and a gloomy 
one it had been. No; there was only time to look at 
those wonderful lines with which Murray closed his 
story of ‘John Norton’s Vagabond,’ ” and these I 
read: 

“Ah, friends, dear friends, as years go on and 

HEADS GET GRAY—HOW FAST THE GUESTS DO GO. 

Touch hands, touch hands with those that 
stay. Strong hands to weak, old hands to 

YOUNG, AROUND THE CHRISTMAS BOARD TOUCH 


202 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


HANDS. The false forget, the foe forgive, for 

EVERY GUEST WILL GO AND EVERY FIRE BURN LOW, 
AND CABIN EMPTY STAND. FORGET, FORGIVE, FOR 
WHO MAY SAY THAT CHRISTMAS DAY MAY EVER COME 
TO HOST OR GUEST AGAIN. TOUCH HANDS.” 

I would not want to say that the lamp, minus its 
dark green shade, suddenly gave an upward flare 
and remained at its highest illuminating power, Till 
I retired; I cannot prove that it did and there were 
no other witnesses. Nor do I dare say that the 
brown paper on the walls that had seemed so somber 
an hour before suddenly changed and became several 
shades lighter, for no one would believe me. But it 
must be stated in all candor, that something hap¬ 
pened in the little room as I read these words. Then 
I sat back in the easy chair, placed my feet in front 
of the “Franklin” and closed my eyes. 

“IPs not too late yet, to add a little to the interest 
of the season,” I remarked to myself, after a half 
hour of meditation. “I’ll have Moody Hall opened 
one night this week, and all the boys shall be invited 
—yes the boys and the girls—and I’ll see that ‘Fat’ is 
there, and I will read my best stories—one, two or 
three of them; and besides that, I’ll bring some 
chairs up into this room, some night this week,— 
into this room of gloom and light, of resentment and 
surrender,—and I will invite some boys, as many as 
the room can accommodate, and there will be re¬ 
freshments, and I will read the best stories I have 
left, and, well, ‘Fat’ will be invited to come with the 
rest”. 


Yours for a Merry Christmas, 



LETTER XXX 


Dear Friend:— 

In the past you may have noticed a similarity in 
my letters; but you may keep in mind, if you feel so 
disposed, that there is a limit to excitement in a 
place like Applehurst. Applehurst is not a center 
of population; up here I have never encouraged 
immigration of undesirables; there are no over¬ 
crowded tenements here on the hill—though I sus¬ 
pect I kept ten more pullets in my poultry shed last 
winter than was consistent with the best health of 
the biddies. There is always variety in the sunsets; 
the wind changes at varying intervals and the dis¬ 
tant mountains are more clearly discernable some 
days than others. But these are not items which I 
need write you; leaving out the temperature, atmos¬ 
pheric changes and petty details of life here, any 
attempt at correspondence is likely to become more 
or less stereotyped. You must not expect any thrills 
in my epistles as you might, were I “on the frontier” 
or were I writing you from some “great mart of 
trade.” 

But this letter is of another kind. It is different. 
If I succeed in placing facts before you as they actu¬ 
ally exist, and if after you have read what is to 
follow, you review it, you will find this letter lament¬ 
able in its contents; it is saturated with melancholy; 
it is dripping with pathos. 

And because I am in that state of mind this morn- 

203 


204 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


ing I would like to administer a gentle shock to 
someone, or at least give a thrill—it’s a chill rather 
than thrill in me—I shall state the conclusion first 
and then go into details afterwards. 

I have sold out; I have sold out at less than cost; 
I have sold out at a sacrifice. 

I did not like the idea of a bankrupt sale—it might 
hurt my future credit; a “sheriff’s sale,” whatever 
that may be, has a “legal proceedings” sound that is 
distasteful, and I do not want the memory of it 
attached to this locality; and there is something too 
sad and gruesome about an auction to make the idea 
here and now tolerable. 

When in 1917 we were all stirred by the announce¬ 
ment that food would win the war and news came 
that a college had ploughed up its campus and 
planted it to potatoes, and a millionaire had surren¬ 
dered the great lawn on his estate for a field of 
beans and we were exhorted to poke beet seed and 
lettuce-seed and cucumber seed into every crack and 
crevice in the back yard that contained soil enough 
to answer the requirements for germination, I fell 
in line. 

Of course the Government would not accept a man 
of my age for military service, but I could help win 
the war. I wanted to do it in a worth-while fashion. 
No back-door-yard garden for me; a machine gun 
has greater possibilities than a rifle. 

And so, as you know, I bought a pair of horses, a 
set of double harness and other things in like 
manner. By “things,” I mean farming implements, 
fertilizers, hens, pigs, cows—just things, and all 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 205 


kinds of things. I stopped at nothing that would 
help win the war. 

But I made one mistake. The day after the 
armistice was signed I should have announced that 
a special sale of implements of warfare at Apple- 
hurst—souvenirs of the World War, relics of a great 
conflict and the like. It would have been a glorious 
victory. I might then have put a gilded eagle on my 
flag-staff, a cupola on my sheep barn to match the 
one on the cow barn, and some Liberty Bonds, pur¬ 
chased with the proceeds of my sale into the deposit 
box. 

But I held on; I loved the war up here on the hill, 
and kept on fighting just as though the armistice 
had not been signed. I was like a soldier who has 
been honorably discharged after good service, 
saying: 

“Let me fight; let me carry on the war just the 
same—I like it and I won’t quit fighting.” 

Before 1917 I had never wanted to devote my 
time to farming, because other men could produce 
all the food and food products the world needed; 
when it became so plain that all I could possibly 
raise was needed by this hungry world, why—well, 
in I went. 

It is now March, 1921. The potatoes I raised in 
1920 are in the cellar—potatoes are thirty cents a 
bushel; not a carrot of the 1920 cultivation and har¬ 
vest sold; not an ounce of wool disposed of, though 
wool is now worth fifteen cents a pound if there were 
a demand for it; it is going to cost a lot to have the 
products of last year’s farming put out of the cellar 
and back to the land again; and my tax bill not yet 


206 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


paid. The world does not need my efforts at farm¬ 
ing, when millions of bushels of potatoes and the 
like are unmarketable. 

So I have sold out. It happened that just as I 
was deciding to quit war, I was in Portland, Maine, 
and a dollar-sale was in progress. In one store the 
sign “$1.00” was pasted on the inside of the plate- 
glass windows and the “$1.00” was formed of dollar 
bills. 

The idea appealed to me. Why not have a dollar- 
sale at Applehurst? Why not come home and look 
over my possessions—the implements of war I had 
acquired since I began to fight—and see how many 
I could afford to mark at one dollar each and clean 
up the whole business, perhaps in a single day. I 
felt quite sure I could make a success of such a sale 
and dispose of any article I might be willing to part 
with at one dollar. I made out a list without much 
difficulty, though I occasionally suffered a twinge. 

First there was the potato-digger. I do not re¬ 
member how much I paid for it, even, but the present 
price is somewhat over a hundred dollars I believe. 

One potato-digger.$1.00 

The potato-planter was a complicated affair; I 

rented it once or twice last year, but it was in good 
condition. It seemed like an enormous discount, but 
I made the entry. 

One potato-planter.$1.00 

Then followed cultivator, sulky plow, mowing 
machine, horse-rake and other things, each at one 
dollar. 

It was when I came to the horses that I suffered 
the twinges. Horses are not in the same class with 




LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 207 


rakes and cultivators; horses are living things; they 
mean something. But my relations to the dumb 
animals on my farm were peculiar anyway. Billy, 
the buck, was about the only quadruped that seemed 
to have any respect for me, though in his case respect 
seemed to amount almost to admiration. Whenever 
he was browsing in the orchard and I followed the 
semi-circular drive from Applehurst to Clover-Slope, 
Billy, if he chanced to be near the beaten path would 
stand at attention until I had gone past him; stand¬ 
ing at attention, he would not, so far as I could see, 
move a muscle until I was out of the range of his 
observation. He seemed to say: 

“Behold, the lord of the manor—how lordly his 
tread! Hail to the master of Applehurst,—how mas¬ 
terful his bearing! Honor to the man who owns this 
ranch or would if the mortgage could be raised!” 

My horses seemed to care naught for me—not a 
thing unless I chanced to have a carrot or a handful 
of corn, and even then they would take no account of 
me; they always acted as though they expected me 
to admire them. The cows and live stock were just 
as thoughtless and their attitude was one of supreme 
indifference; the only exception to this was a two- 
year-old heifer that appeared to be paying me great 
reverence but it was due to the fact that she had the 
pneumonia when only five months old and it left her 
with a peculiar twist to her neck that made her ap¬ 
pear much more reverent than she was; I so under¬ 
stand it. But I wrote it down. 

One horse, “Tweedledum”.$1.00 

Tweedledum cost me two hundred and sixty-five 
dollars in 1917. Tweedledum is worth as much to- 



208 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


day as the day I made the purchase; but I bought 
Tweedledum to help win the war, and the war is 
over; as a souvenir of a great conflict Tweedledum 
would have to be fed, groomed and watered daily. 
This is not feasible. 

Tweedledee, the mate of Tweedledum, presented a 
problem. Tweedledee lost the sight of one eye in 
1918. I do not know what a horse’s eye is worth, 
but it stands to reason that a one-eyed horse would 
be regarded as a defective animal, and not worth 
quite so much as a horse with perfect optics. 

“If Tweedledum goes for one dollar,” I said m 
my heart, “ought I to list Tweedledee at ninety-nine 
cents?” 

It seemed logical, and so I made the entry: 

One horse, “Tweedledee”.$ .99 

A twinge! It did not seem fair to the faithful 
creature, and I exclaimed: 

“I won’t do it; I vow I won’t. Tweedledee shall 
not go for a cent less than Tweedledum, and so an 
erasure was made and the straightforward, uncom¬ 
promising entry appeared in its place: 

One horse, “Tweedledee”.$1.00 

The rest was easy. Having entered the two finest 
animals on the place at the scheduled price, I had 
no difficulty in rating cultivators, sprayers and other 
souvenirs for the dollar-sale. 

But I drew the line at my wheel-barrow. No 
longer engaged in the commendable enterprise of 
winning the world war, it is still incumbent upon me 
to have a garden; a garden for peas and string- 
beans, cannas and delphiniums, beets, and melons, 
marigolds and sweet-peas. 




LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


209 


I will not sell that wheel-barrow for a cent less 
than six dollars—not a cent; and I plan to buy a 
new garden line and a lawn mower this spring to go 
with it. My lawn last year was more profitable 
than any farming operations; I got no money out of 
my potato field or my rows of carrots and corn, but 
I did get some enjoyment out of the African mari¬ 
golds, the tropical appearance of the mass of cannas 
and the nasturtium bed. 

I found a ready purchaser at Good Will; the Good 
Will Home Association picked up each and every 
dollar bargain; it holds my receipt for twenty-nine 
souvenirs sold at eighteen dollars, the lot, actual 
value one thousand and eighteen dollars and Apple- 
hurst’s dollar-sale is now a thing of the past. 

No, I do not regret that I did my share in helping- 
win the war, but when it closed, I should have in¬ 
sisted upon an honorable discharge. 

Cordially yours, 




LETTER XXXI 


My Dear Mr. B.— 

You know that, not long since, I gave an address 
before the Ball Bird Club, in Augusta, Maine—an 
address in which I discussed the “Birds of Good 
Will.” I say “you know” because I saw you in the 
audience, and you appeared to give close attention 
to all I had to say upon my subject. You will recall 
that, in my introductory remarks, I said that there 
were three things in this interesting world of which 
I was consciously ignorant—things about which I 
was aware that I knew but very little, if anything. 

I remarked that I was born a boy; was a boy for 
several years previous to my entering upon man’s 
estate; that since leaving boyhood-days behind me, 
I have read much about boys, have listened to lectures 
on boys, attended conferences about boys, have had 
two sons grow up in my home, have associated much 
with boys in Good Will cottages, in camp, on hikes, 
in religious services, in the school-room*—every¬ 
where—and have a growing consciousness of my ig¬ 
norance of them, and never am I so painfully con¬ 
vinced of it as when I am about to meet some ap¬ 
pointment to speak in public about them—to tell 
all I know. 

I stated that I was born on a farm, spent the first 
seventeen years of my life on my father’s level acres, 
in Connecticut, and since then have been separated 
from farm and country-life less than six years; that 

210 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


211 


I have had an eye on the operations on a farm that 
under my direction grew from one hundred and 
twenty-five acres to something like a thousand 
acres; that I have read magazine articles on farm¬ 
ing, have listened to lectures, taken farm journals, 
talked with practical farmers, embarked on an indi¬ 
vidual farming experience from 1917 to 1921 to help 
save our country by raising my share of the world’s 
food supply, and I am fully convinced that I know 
nothing about the most honorable, noble and useful 
employment in the world. 

I further asserted that I have been preaching 
for more than forty years; that I have read volumes, 
attended lectures, listened to learned discussions, 
have been a student of the Bible and that I have been 
convinced for a long time that I do not know any¬ 
thing about theology; that I have never preached 
theology, having always restricted myself to practi¬ 
cal religion rather than attempting the discussing of 
theological dogmas, fearing the responsibility of at¬ 
tempting to be a teacher of a subject of which I 
know so little. 

I did not, in that address on “Birds of Good Will” 
use quite as many words as I have here, but that was 
the substance of my declaration. And then, you will 
recall, I remarked that since attempting to deliver a 
few “bird lectures” I had become aware of how little 
I know about our feathered friends—little I mean, 
compared with what there is to be known, and what 
I wish I knew. 

It was only a round-about, wordy way of confess¬ 
ing that the more attention and study we give to any 
subject in this world, the more conscious we become 


212 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


of the vastness of the field and how little of it we have 
mastered, or can ever master. 

Was it Newton who likened himself to a child 
playing on a beach and tossing a pebble into the vast 
ocean before him? As I remember it, the great 
philosopher noticed that the pebble made very slight 
impression on the briny deep. 

I know something about astronomy, and why 
knowledge of it is satisfactory, as far as it goes; I 
can find the Big Dipper and Pleiades, the sweet in¬ 
fluences of which cannot be bound; usually I can 
point out the Polar Star though there are two 
twinkling lights up in that vicinity so much alike in 
appearance and location, it’s the one—the one in the 
place where “He has stretched out the north over the 
empty space”; and the Milky Way is always easy; 
but I am never depressed over my ignorance of the 
stars, because I do not yet know enough about them 
to realize how little I know. 

There are many people, thank the Lord, who are 
delving into the mysteries yet to be explored. When 
in summer-time, the lightning streaks across the 
black curtains in the northwest, as I sit on the 
veranda here at Applehurst, and the report thereof 
reverberates up and down the Kennebec Valley, I 
know the storm is electrical; when I press a button 
at Willow-Wood and the dark room is instantly 
flooded with light, I know that it is electricity sub¬ 
ject to human control that does it; I know that there 
is an electric sweeper in my home and that it has 
been gravely, and on several occasions, boldly hinted 
that an electric laundry and an electric dish-washer 
would be wonderfully useful and labor saving; I 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 213 


know that there are people who have gone deep into 
the wonders of the mysterious fluid, and that the 
depth of my pocket-book may be sounded; I know 
that, hidden away in the bowels of my automobile, 
there is something which I have never seen that is 
called a “sparker” but these things do not disturb 
me, because I don’t know enough about electricity to 
be impressed by my ignorance of it. 

And it does not humiliate me as much—not half 
as much—to say “I don’t know” as it did forty years 
ago; the sum of human knowledge and the possibili¬ 
ties of research are so vast that there be few, if any, 
that know much; the more they know about one sub¬ 
ject the less they possibly know about some other 
subject equally important to someone, if not to 
themselves. 

But there is something else now, of which I am 
getting to be consciously ignorant. Some years ago 
—about 1917—I was seized with an impulse to write 
letters to one or two of my friends—I mean long, 
wordy, rambling letters—and the more I wrote, the 
more I wanted to write. And there was a man in 
New York City who read each and every letter—read 
them and said so much about them that I wanted to 
write him again and again; and then came the desire 
to write better letters—letters really worth reading. 
Then I began to be impressed with the fact that let¬ 
ter-writing is an art—and it has been said it is now 
a “lost art” and that people no longer know how to 
write letters. 

But I kept on, because my friend to whom I was 
writing—“Life Member, Manhattan,”—would over¬ 
look the violation of rules and principles, and accept 


214 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


all I had to offer him. And now “Life Member, 
Manhattan” is dead. I cannot write to him any 
more and as I look about for a new correspondent I 
suddenly open my eyes to the fact that I do not 
know the rules, the underlying principles of the art. 
There are five things, instead of four only, of which 
my ignorance is troublesome—boys, farming, the¬ 
ology, birds and letter-writing. 

And I am wondering if I may write this letter to 
you with assurance that it will be received as “Life 
Member, Manhattan” received the epistles I ad¬ 
dressed to him. 

It was my privilege to have been born early 
enough in the world’s history, so I could hear some 
of the great pulpit orators whose names were house¬ 
hold words a generation or more ago, each leaving 
his impression upon the age in which he lived—each 
in a class by himself—such men as Beecher, Moody, 
Talmadge, Murray, Joseph Parker—thrilling the 
hearts and inspiring the souls of multitudes who ad¬ 
mired them, and becoming targets for the hordes of 
peoples who can condemn even if they do not under¬ 
stand. 

To me the most magnetic of them all was Murray; 
the most impressive and unforgetable was Joseph 
Parker, of the City Temple, in London. The last 
named was noted, in the minds of the critics, for 
what was called his colossal self-conceit. One day, 
walking along a country-road with a friend who had 
never heard Parker preach, I chanced to mention 
him in terms of admiration and praise. My friend 
quickly related an incident which, in his judgment, 
illustrated the great man’s egotism. He said that 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 215 


Dr. Parker was about to enter the City Temple of 
London, one Sunday morning, when he received a 
cablegram, announcing the death of Rev. T. DeWitt 
Talmadge, D.D., in Washington, D. C. He was pro¬ 
foundly affected by the unexpected news. Dr. 
Parker, had for many years, kept a Bible in the 
Temple, in which he had asked the great men who at 
any time had preached in that pulpit, to place their 
autographs. 

On the Sunday morning in question, Dr. Parker 
opened that Bible, and, after the manner of a school¬ 
master, at the opening exercises of the day’s session, 
called the roll. 

It was the custom, as you know, in such schools, 
for some pupil qualified to do it, to answer “Absent” 
for any absentee whose name was called. After this 
manner Dr. Parker proceeded: 

“Rev. John Hall, D.D.— dead; Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher,— dead; Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon,— dead; 
Rev. T. DeWitt Talmadge, D.D.— dead and then 
reverently closing the book, bowing his head in sor¬ 
row, with indescribable pathos he exclaimed: 

“I feel very lonesome this morning.” 

Whether the incident had any basis in fact, I do 
not know; if it had, whether it was related correctly 
by my friend, I cannot tell, but it was given in good 
faith by him as an illustration of the great preach¬ 
er’s self-conceit; did he not, by his act that Sunday 
morning, have the audacity to place himself in the 
list of great preachers, as though he thought he be¬ 
longed there? 

I could not approve of my friend’s attitude; Dr. 
Parker belonged among the world’s great preachers, 


216 LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


and he, by virtue of the position he held, the pulpit 
he had occupied for so many years, and his unique 
career, knew it. 

Up here alone, today, I am calling the roll of men 
who stood by me in sympathy and conferred with 
me often and left indelible impressions upon Good 
Will and upon myself; they were men who had done 
well their tasks and I am not necessarily placing 
myself in their class, when I do it. 

In part the roll-call is like this: “Hon. Moses 
Giddens, Bangor, Me.,— dead; Mr. George Henry 
Quincy, Boston, Mass.,— dead,; Mr. Walter M. Smith, 
Stamford, Conn.,— dead; Mr. A. N. Ryerson, Noro- 
ton, Conn.,— dead; Judge Nathaniel Hobbs, North 
Berwick, Maine,— dead; Thomas W. Hall, New 
Canaan, Conn.,— dead; ‘Life Member, Manhattan,’ 
Brooklyn, N. Y.,— dead. 

It is this last response that, today, gives me a 
sense of loneliness. Since 1917 I have been writing 
these letters—long, rambling letters you may say, 
but the best I knew how, to “Life Member, Man¬ 
hattan.” And now he no longer responds to the roll- 
call; his life work is ended and his last task per¬ 
formed. 

I have stood by many caskets; I have prayed over 
the lifeless forms of little children and my soul has 
been filled with a sense of unfathomable mystery; I 
have stood by the dead body of a father or mother 
whose children could not understand until the sun 
should set that they had suddenly become fatherless 
or motherless, and I have been filled with pity; but 
neither mystery nor pity haunted me on the evening 
that I stood by the side of the casket of “Life Mem- 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


217 


ber, Manhattan”. No; neither “pity” nor “mystery” 
but “triumph” was the word. 

I called on a friend and she mentioned the swift 
passage of days and weeks, and spoke of her own 
advanced age. 

“I hope the fact that you have lived so long is not 
disquieting to you,” I said. 

She replied, with a smile, that quite the reverse 
was true; that she had always liked to see things 
completed and that to see anything finished had 
given her special pleasure, and now she was inter¬ 
ested in the finishing touches of her own life; its 
completion was near at hand. 

I think I am coming to be like her in this respect; 
1 have always been interested in building; the 
breaking of ground for a new structure, and the lay¬ 
ing of a corner-stone have been occasions of special 
satisfaction; the sight of new lumber, piles of brick 
and stone gradually taking form and symmetry are 
especially gratifying. I have been interested too, 
in character-building—a youth laying foundations 
for life and a career is always an inspiration; but 
more and more I love to see things finished—I ad¬ 
mit it. And so, the end of an aged man’s life—a 
man like “Life Member, Manhattan” is an inspira¬ 
tion rather than a sorrow, as soon as I get beyond 
the first sense of loss. He had formed, in early life, 
a purpose; over the formation of a symmetrical life 
and character he had talked and prayed; he had been 
determined to run with patience the race that was 
set before him, and all this he had succeeded in 
doing. 

I cannot help it—I always have a sense of triumph 



218 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


in my heart when I stand by the casket of one who 
has finished a full life and completed a symmetrical 
character. No; I cannot mourn. Why should I 
mourn when a man completes his work and rounds 
out his life? 

Did you ever try to think what this world would 
be, if there were no deaths—if men could not die? 
What if it had been decreed that man should be 
born into this life, pass through infancy, childhood, 
youth, manhood and reach old age and continue to 
grow old, but never die. Can you imagine it? All 
our ancestors, back through the centuries, still liv¬ 
ing; all of them infirm, decrepid, diseased, sightless, 
deaf, worn-out, wretched through age but still 
living! 

Was there ever a more benign provision than this, 
that when a man’s work is done and his vision 
dimmed and his hearing impaired and his body worn 
out and the mental qualities failing, the heart shall 
finally stop beating and the mortal body returned to 
its kindred element—“earth to earth, ashes to ashes, 
dust to dust?” 

So I am not mourning over the triumph of “Life 
Member, Manhattan”. But, as I come up here, just 
as I have so many times in the past, and feel like 
writing a letter I cannot write him, because his eyes 
will not fall upon it; he will not respond, as he al¬ 
ways used to with expressions of appreciation. But 
I want to write, and so I am addressing this epistle 
to you, not because I know how to write letters!—it is 
one of the things I am gradually being convinced 
that I do not know, as I said at the opening. And 


LETTERS FROM APPLEHURST 


219 


now, Life Member, Manhattan, is dead and the “Let¬ 
ters from Applehurst” are at an end. 

Most cordially yours, 


The End 
















































